cantish

Updated: May 23, 2025

The indignation of the female portion of the Burnside family was well subdued, not because of any cantish false delicacy, but in order that their own lads might not be encouraged to say or do anything rash. They left the father to communicate the news of Mary Routledge's illness to them.

Baron Walter Runciman Runciman - The Shellback's Progress: In the Nineteenth Century

That is all very pretty, and sounds pre-Napoleonic, but we cannot all swallow sweet, cantish little nothings in place of food and wages. Better would it have been had Elizabeth shown some practical evidence of "devotion" to her "people" by granting supplies and food to her starving sailors who fought and won in the most deadly naval encounter that the world has ever known.

Baron Walter Runciman Runciman - The Shellback's Progress: In the Nineteenth Century