Emily Dickinson Lexicon

CANT, n.¹

1. A toss; a throw, thrust or push with a sudden jerk; as, to give a ball a cant. [This is the literal sense.]
2. A whining, singing manner of speech; a quaint, affected mode of uttering words, either in conversation or preaching.
3. The whining speech of beggars, as in asking alms and making complaints of their distresses.
4. The peculiar words and phrases of professional men; phrases often repeated, or not well authorized.
5. Any barbarous jargon in speech.
6. Whining pretension to goodness. – Johnson.
7. Outcry, at a public sale of goods; a call for bidders at an auction. – Swift. This use of the word is precisely equivalent to auction, auctio, a hawking, a crying out, or in the vulgar dialect, a singing out; but I believe not in use in the United States.