canton

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French canton (“corner; piece or portion of a country”),^[2][3][4][5] from Old French canton (“corner, portion of a country, part of a shield”).^[6][7] The French word is traced by Barnhart, Etymonline, the American Heritage Dictionary and Collins to Italian cantone, in Barnhart and Etymonline its Lombard dialect form meaning a region, especially in the mountains, an augmentative of canto (“corner”);^{[2][5][7][8][6]} Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, Hoad, the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English trace it instead to Old Occitan cant (“edge, side, corner”).^{[3][4][9][10][11]} Both go back to Vulgar Latin *cantus,^[2][7] from Latin canthus (“iron tyre of a wheel”), also written cantus,^[3][8][5] which Etymonline thinks possibly of Celtic origin, comparing Welsh cant (“rim, edge”).^[5] The verb is partly formed from the noun and partly taken from French cantonner (“to quarter”) and Italian cantonare.^[6][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Barnhart dates the word to 1522, already for a part of a country.^[2] The OED's first record is "a corner, an angle", before 1533 in Lord Berners' translation of Guevara, a sense obsolete by 1653,^[6][5][3] and Merriam-Webster also dates the word to 1522.^[3]

Semantic evolution

From "corner" the word passed in the 1570s into heraldry, where a canton is a square division in the upper corner of a shield (1572), and into the description of flags, where it is the upper corner next to the staff.^[6][5][3][9] From about 1600 it also meant a division or piece of anything (1601–86) and a subdivision of a country or a small district (1601, in Holland's Pliny).^[6][5][9] Cotgrave (1611) applied it to the states of the Swiss confederation and to the divisions of a French arrondissement, the senses it has kept.^[6][5] Johnson (1755) defined it as "a small parcel or division of land", quoting "that little canton of land, called the English pale".^[12] The verb meant to divide land into parts from the 1590s,^[6][5] or 1572 in Merriam-Webster.^[3] From 1700 it also meant to quarter soldiers, a sense the OED attributes partly to French cantonner;^[6] from it came cantonment, borrowed in 1756 from cantonnement.^[2] In older Scots, canton was an angle or corner, and the verb meant to divide.^[13]

Timeline

• 1522 – a part or division of a country.^[2][3]
• before 1533 – a corner, an angle (obsolete by 1653).^[6]
• 1572 – in heraldry, a square division in the upper corner of a shield.^[6][5]
• 1572 – verb, to divide into parts, in Merriam-Webster; 1598 in the OED.^[3][6]
• 1601 – a subdivision of a country, a small district; a piece or part of anything.^[6]
• 1611 – a state of the Swiss confederation; a division of a French arrondissement.^[6][5]
• 1700 – verb, to quarter soldiers.^[6]
• 1756 – cantonment.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A small territorial division of a country; especially, one of the states of the Swiss confederation.^[3][8][6]
2. In France, a division of an arrondissement.^[3][8][6]
3. (heraldry) A square division, smaller than a quarter, in the upper corner of a shield.^[8][6]
4. The upper corner of a flag next to the staff, or a rectangle filling it.^[3][5]
5. (obsolete, 1533–1653) A corner or angle.^[6][3]

Verb

1. To divide into parts or cantons.^[3][8][6]
2. (especially formerly) To quarter soldiers.^[8][6]

Word family

• cantonal
• cantonalism
• cantonize

Related words

• cant
• cantle
• canto

Usage notes

In the sense "to quarter soldiers" the verb was pronounced with the stress on the second syllable, /kanˈtuːn/ in the OED.^[6][8] Canton was also, from 1594 to 1616, a form of canto, perhaps through confusion of the Italian words for "corner" and "song".^[6][10] Canton with a capital, the former English name of the Chinese city and region now called Guangzhou and Guangdong, has its own origin, and gave names such as Canton china and Canton flannel (from 1860).^[5][6][8]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)