[f. CANT v.3 + -ER1.]
1. One who uses the ‘cant’ of thieves, etc.; one of the ‘canting crew’; a rogue, vagabond. arch.
1608. Dekker, Lanth. & Candle-lt., B iv. Stay and heare a Canter in his owne Language, making Rithmes.
1610. S. R[owlands], Mart. Mark-all, E j b. Thus haue I runne ouer the Canter’s Dictionary.
1630. J. Taylor (Water P.), Wks., II. 239/1. [They] gaue all their mony to the mendicanting Canters.
1652. Gaule, Magastrom., 131. Astrologers, Soothsayers, Canters, Gypsies, Juglers, &c.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, III. 100. A Filcher my Brother, A Canter my Uncle.
1865. trans. V. Hugo’s Hunchback, II. vi. 76. Four or five canters … were quarrelling.
2. A talker of professional or religious cant; in 17th c. a nickname of the Puritans.
1652. Evelyn, Mem. (1857), I. 292. On Whit-Sunday, I went to the church … and heard one of the canters.
1711. Vind. Sacheverell, 42. The seditious Canter.
1821. Blackw. Mag., X. 731. The Schlegels are the great critical canters of modern Europe.
1848. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., I. 215. The days when he [Lauderdale] was a canter and a rebel.
