Template talk:cant

And associated Category:Cant. From cant, does this mean, "secret language" or simply ? Also this is a very technical term that is a best unlikely to be understood by even fairly advanced foreign learners. Circeus 18:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's supposed to just mean cant, meaning 1 or 2. Meaning 2 "secret language" is the more distinctive and useful sense. OTOH, I had a deifferent notion of what it meant until spending a lot time here. As with many other grammatical/linguistic terms, it would be more useful if there were a link (blue, black, or some not-too-obtrusive color) to a glossary or principal namespace entry or an appendix that offered a satisfactory definition. DCDuring TALK 18:33, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, all uses of the tag are from the Classic 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue imports, which definitely outlines that the term is at best dated, at worst literary or outright archaic. Circeus 19:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I've noted that "cant" terms sometimes appear in etymologies. The applications of the label at present in Wiktionary may be dated. The term is useful even if dated. The phenomenon of secret criminal language is certainly not dated, though it may be hard to document the entries. It might be that we need to label these specific entries as "cant, dated: 18th century". DCDuring TALK 19:16, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought argot was a fairly well-accepted term for "criminal languages". Arguably  should be able to do the trick? Given that slang is by definition more or less opaque to outsiders. Circeus 19:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I like that cant is brief, but I could accept any set of terms that did not contradict generally accepted meanings. It is, of course, extremely unhelpful that the terms argot, cant, jargon, and slang have overlapping definitions. Perhaps the best we can do is use slang with qualifiers. "Slang" in the most common sense is not limited to the "secret language" sense. "Slang" seems to be the term of choice in other dictionaries. DCDuring TALK 20:33, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that deletion is necessarily the right answer, I'm somewhere between a redirect and a rewrite to make it useful, but I don't think that adds anything useful. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:42, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Kept for no consensus.--Jusjih 02:38, 31 August 2009 (UTC)