What does cantar mean?
Cantar is an archaic and now rarely encountered English word denoting a drinking cup or small vessel. It derives ultimately from the Greek kantharos, a two-handled stemmed goblet used in antiquity, which passed into Latin as cantharus before entering English usage. In modern contexts the word survives almost exclusively in historical dictionaries and specialist discussions of antique tableware; readers are far more likely to meet its near-homophone "canter," the horse's gait. A separate and unrelated word also called cantar exists in some Mediterranean and Middle Eastern trading traditions, where it names a unit of weight borrowed from Arabic. Because of its obscurity, cantar is chiefly of interest to students of etymology and the history of everyday objects rather than to general users of contemporary English, who would express the same idea with words such as cup, goblet, or tankard.
nounAn archaic term for a drinking cup or small vessel, derived ultimately from the Greek kantharos, a type of stemmed drinking goblet.
- A drinking cup or small vessel (archaic and rare).
"The museum displayed a medieval cantar alongside other drinking vessels of the period."
"The collection included a silver cantar used for ceremonial toasts."
"In older texts, the word cantar occasionally appears as the name for a drinking goblet."
As a countable noun referring to vessels, cantar forms a regular plural in -s, though such uses are rare given the word's obsolescence.
"The cellar inventory listed several cantars among the household goods."
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cantar
The word cantar entered English from Latin cantharus, itself borrowed from Greek kantharos, the name for a two-handled stemmed drinking cup used in classical antiquity. It is therefore a distant cousin of "cantharides," the name of blister beetles, which shares the Greek root. The word fell out of ordinary use centuries ago and today appears mainly in historical lexicography.
How cantar is actually used
"Cantar" is archaic and extremely rare in modern English; it is encountered mainly in historical dictionaries and scholarly writing about antique vessels. It should not be confused with the common noun "cantar" meaning a unit of weight in some Mediterranean and Middle Eastern markets (from Arabic qinṭār), which is a separate word.
Easily confused with cantar
A canter is the smooth three-beat gait of a horse between a trot and a gallop, while a cantar is an archaic word for a drinking cup.