cant

1 the pretending of having virtues, principles, or beliefs that one in fact does not have <many accused the evangelist of cant, since his lavish lifestyle seemed to bear little resemblance to what he was preaching> Synonyms cant, dissembling, dissimulation, insincerity, piousnessRelated Words deceit, deceitfulness, deception, deceptiveness, dishonesty, double-dealing, falsity, perfidy, two-facedness; affectation, affectedness, pretense (or pretence), pretension, pretentiousness, sanctimoniousness, self-righteousness, self-satisfaction; duplicity, fakery, falseness, fraudulentness, shamming; artificiality, glibness, oiliness, smoothness, unctuousnessNear Antonyms candor, directness, forthrightness, frankness, honesty, openheartedness, openness, probity, straightforwardness, truthfulness; artlessness, guilelessness, naturalness, unaffectednessAntonyms genuineness, sincereness, sincerity

2 the special terms or expressions of a particular group or field <the colorful cant used by movie producers and publicity agents in Hollywood> Synonyms argot, cant, dialect, jargon, jive, language, lingo, patois, patter, shop, shoptalk, slang, vocabularyRelated Words colloquial, colloquialism, idiom, localism, parlance, pidgin, provincialism, regionalism, speech, vernacular, vernacularism; slanguage; bureaucratese, computerese, cyberspeak, educationese, governmentese, journalese, technobabble

running in a slanting direction <the cant buttresses on the interior walls are made of solid oak> Synonyms diagonal, canted, graded, inclined, leaning, listing, oblique, pitched, raked, slant, slanted, slantwise, sloped, sloping, tilted, tiltingNear Antonyms horizontal, level; plumb, up-and-down, vertical; parallel, perpendicular

to set or cause to be at an angle <carefully canted the ladder against the wall> Synonyms angle, lean, cock, heel, incline, list, pitch, slant, slope, tilt, tipRelated Words bank; bend, deviate, swerve, veer; decline, descend, recline, retreatNear Antonyms even, flatten, level, straighten