cantle

plural cantles

1. obsoleteA splinter, slice, or sliver broken off something.

   In one cantle of his law.

   1643, J[ohn] M[ilton], The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: […], London: […] T[homas] P[aine] and M[atthew] S[immons] […], →OCLC

   2 more examples

   See how this river comes me cranking in, / And cuts me from the best of all my land / A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.

   , Act III, Scene i

   Their armors forged were of metal frail; / On every side thereof huge cantles flies; / The land was strewed all with plate and mail, / That on the earth, on that their warm blood lies.

   1600, Edward Fairfax (tr.), The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, Book VI, xlviii

2. The raised back of a saddle.

   He recognised a horse when he saw one, and could do more than fill a cantle.

   1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio, published 2005, page 93

   2 more examples

   Next day, he returned with a camel-saddle of equal beauty, the long brass horns of its cantles adorned with exquisite old Yemeni engraving.

   1926, T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

   The traps were packed in the splitwillow basket that his father wore with the shoulderstraps loosed so that the bottom of the basket carried on the cantle of the saddle behind him.

   1994, Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

3. ScotlandThe top of the head.
4. ScotlandOn many styles of sporran, a metal arc along the top of the pouch, usually fronting the clasp.

present singular third person cantles · participle present cantling · participle past cantled · past cantled

1. obsoletetransitiveTo cut into pieces.
2. obsoletetransitiveTo cut out from.