As a verb it's 'cant' not 'cantor'.
  • RobinwilliamsRobinwilliams
    Posts: 4
    See this error all over the place, mostly posts from the United States and especially on social media sites, even from Roman Catholic church music directors. In the past it's 'canted' not 'cantored'. In the future it's 'will cant', not 'will cantor'.
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  • BenBen
    Posts: 3,114
    I cant do it. Sorry.
    Thanked by 7Spriggo ZacPB189 bkenney27 Mark Husey pegwhit Casavant Organist mlabelle
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Is that a big problem in the Untied States?
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  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    What if you're not good at singing? Then I guess you can't cant.

    I understand some German philosophers are also poor liturgical singers. For example, Kant can't cant.
    Thanked by 5Spriggo Bobby Bolin Mark M. Casavant Organist mlabelle
  • Daniel Bennett PageDaniel Bennett Page
    Posts: 833
    You, Kant, be serious!
    And whatcha gonna do about Eddie Cantor?
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,942
    Kant can't cant cant.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    For Adam:

    Urban Dictionary

    1. Cantored

    Shaving your head to the point where you are as bald as Jim Cantore from The Weather Channel.
    I took a razor and shaved all my hair off like a badass. Dude, I'm totally Cantored.

    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    The horse got away and canted home, aghast at the canting he heard from the cantoress who we hope will go forth and cant no more?

    How do you all deal with ain't over there? Or ain't there no way to do this? Or do you use the h?

    Common usage in the US ain't going to change cantor and cantored, they are here to stay.

  • Bobby Bolin
    Posts: 417
    Gavin, I'm just wondering if you put "Untied" intentionally or not...
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    What will a cantor do if a cantor can't cant chant.
    Along came a sage with the Kant-esque name Immanuel,
    when given neumic runes, to his knees he fell,
    saying, I'm a Kant, not a cantor, who can't cant chant.
    Signed: I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't. I. Kant.
  • ZacPB189ZacPB189
    Posts: 70
    Makes sense. That's be like using the germanic equivalent and saying: "I'm going to singer today." or "Jessye Norman singered real loud."
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  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Bobby, the original post had "United" spelled incorrectly. I always find it funny when someone correcting another's spelling or grammar makes their own mistakes.
    Thanked by 1Robinwilliams
  • Bobby Bolin
    Posts: 417
    Ah, just wondering, because it made sense (to me) both ways!
    Thanked by 1Gavin
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    Robin is right!
    Canting is what a cantor or a cantrix does.
    But then, this would not be the first time a noun had been verbified.

    Why not just Englishify it all and say that chanting is done by a chanter.
    After all, a cantor (or a cantrix) is a chanter who chants chant.
    Thanked by 1Robinwilliams
  • jpal
    Posts: 365
    Seriously, which definition is it? These are the verb ones I found:

    transitive verb
    1: to give a cant or oblique edge to : bevel
    2: to set at an angle : tilt
    3 chiefly British : to throw with a lurch
    intransitive verb
    1: to pitch to one side : lean
    2: slope


    1: to talk or beg in a whining or singsong manner
    2: to speak in cant or jargon
    3: to talk hypocritically


    It seems the best candidate is "to talk or beg in a whining or singsong manner," which may be true at many parishes -- but fortunately not mine.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    Wasn't there an ABBA song, Take a Chants on Me? Now did they cant it or chant it? And what could it mean?
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  • jpal
    Posts: 365
    Yes, Kathy. More recently there's Nicki Minaj's "Last Chants," which describes her struggle to choose music for the recessional (since there's no proper for that). And don't forget John Lennon's "Give Pisa Chants," which is about reviving the ancient chant of the cathedral of Pisa (it was suppressed on account of superstition when it was discovered that the cantors canted in a canted tower).
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  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    Right. And don't forget, "It's my last dance, last Chants for love..." which is about the end of disco.
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  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    "Chantses are..."
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  • cmb
    Posts: 82
    Many times, they cant. Often times, they shouldn't.
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,388
    Cantors chant. Choirs chant. PIPs chant. I've never known those who cant.
    Thanked by 7CHGiffen Spriggo jpal Adam Wood ScottKChicago Salieri Andrew Motyka
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    Cantors chant. Choirs chant. PIPs chant. None cant.

    It's about time.
    Thanked by 3Adam Wood ScottKChicago Salieri
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    I get so tired of the cant from some quarters that ordinary people can't chant.
  • Mark HuseyMark Husey
    Posts: 192
    Untied States- that's funny (and I believe intentionally so).
    Dyslexics: UNTIE!
    Dyslexics have more fnu.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,933
    Bad spellers of the world, untie! Dyslexics worship another Dog.
    Thanked by 2Gavin Casavant Organist
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,045
    Is it really Cantrix and not Cantress? In any case, they aren't cantors.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    JQ -
    It's
    cantor - cantrix
    or
    chanter - chantress
    or
    just chanter
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    So, a chanteuse need not apply?
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  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    What, are we going to change the forum color to chartreuse?
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn Adam Wood
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    Chanteuse? Well, yes, if we were French (that is) it would be chanteur - chanteuse.
    Now, how about German? Is there a feminine form of kantor?

    And, Fr Krisman:
    It's not at all true that 'none cant'!
    I'm sure that you are familiar with this breed:
    they are otherwise known as complainers...
    about most anything that is handy to complain about.
    Their cant knows no end.
  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,388
    MJO, touché. You're correct, the verb "cant" exists, but there is doubt in my mind that it means "to sing." Above, jpal provided a definition of the verb (I think it may have been from the Merriam Webster dictionary), yet none of the meanings had to do with a cantor's singing/chanting. Perhaps the OED gives more definitions, I don't know.

    For the time being, I would disagree with Robinwilliams, who began this discussion, and say that it is probably incorrect usage to say that a cantor "cants," unless it's to complain about the pastor or about the music being sung.
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  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    @MJO: A female cantor would be called "Kantorin" in German.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    Yeah, there's really no verb "to cant" in the sense in which the OP wishes there were. Admittedly, buried as the last definition in the third entry for the verb "cant" in the OED is "II.10 intr. To chant, sing. Sc. or dial. ? Obs." That is to say, to the extent this is a verb, it is an obsolete Scots or maybe dialectical one, little-used even in the 18th century. The ordinary English noun "cantor" comes directly from the Latin; it was not constructed from a previous verb "to cant." What a cantor does is sing, and if we want to invent a new verb to express the idea "to be a cantor, to exercise the role of cantor" I think that "to cantor" is as good as any.
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  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    That.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    But 'to cantor' hath the ring of a made-up colloquialism, not a real word.

    I think that 'to sing' or 'to chant' is better.
    Especially in speech.
    Then we would be certain that the cantor wasn't riding a horse.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    When I chant, often I can 'til late, so here we go:

    cantillate (v. i.) : To chant; to recite with musical tones.
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  • MarkThompson
    Posts: 768
    Oh I forgot, verbing weirds language. We certainly wouldn't want to "make up" a word by just using the noun as a verb, it's so gauche (too bad like half of English verbs were invented this way ...)

    Anyway, the problem with "to sing" or "to chant" is neither is exclusive to the cantor. "I'm singing at church today" = vague; "I'm cantoring at church today" = precise.
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  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,148
    Not vague but very precise: "I'm cantillating at mass today."
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    "I'm cantillating at mass today."

    This sounds, I don't know, kinda sexy.
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  • ronkrisman
    Posts: 1,388
    I'm cantillating at mass today.

    If the dialogues from the RM are sung by the priest and people, they're all cantillating.
    Thanked by 2CHGiffen Andrew Motyka
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    By the way, how long has cantoring at Mass, in the sense of leading congregational song, been a thing?
  • gregpgregp
    Posts: 632
    By the way, how long has cantoring at Mass, in the sense of leading congregational song, been a thing?


    Based on personal anecdata, not before the 're-introduction' of the responsorial psalm. But that's just my recollection.
  • Musicteacher56
    Posts: 621
    If a cantor can't cant, can a singer sing?
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  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    Cantors are not a Vatican II fabrication. They existed in quite early times, were highly regarded, skilled chanters, and were sometimes ordained. They sang from cantatoria, books which contained the texts which were to be chanted (more probably, cantillated), but, of course, had no musical notation. They were very highly trained masters of the vocal art of delivering sacred texts. These were, of course, a very different breed from those who today imagine themselves to be cantors because they sing a few lines out of Respond and Acclaim or some such over a microphone. Nor did they gyrate and fling their arms around in a great narcissistic display. As for the responsorial psalm: it is nothing new: the Gradual IS what is left of a responsorial psalm. (Somewhere in Edward Foley's book about the music of the pre-Constantinian Church we read that there was a canon passed forbidding cantors to use curling irons in their hair. Vanity, vanity.... it, too, is ancient.)
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  • jpal
    Posts: 365
    Yes, since the word "singer" means "one who sings," whereas the word cantor does not mean "one who cants."
  • jpal
    Posts: 365
    (sorry that was for MT)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,451
    According to THE PAGE BOOK, the original job of the Cantor was operating the fish kite puppets.

    #thepagebook
  • SalieriSalieri
    Posts: 3,177
    Do cantors canter canting chant?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    The cantor who canters while canting will a problem with breath support have, resulting in yet more cant from those who can't abide chant.
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  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 857
    As an English teacher, I have to just say that words develop the way they develop and the change cannot be stopped, particularly if it is useful. "Sorbet" and "sherbet" both derived from the Arabic word (as I recall, or Turkish) for "fruit juice," and until the craze for "sorbet" in the 1980s, you could use them interchangeably. Even James Beard did so in his cookbooks. But then it turned out that people preferred it without any dairy in it, so "sorbet" became different than "sherbert," and no one, not even my grandmother, could stop "sherbet" from becoming "shebert."

    My own favorite is "forte." People like to say that it should be pronounced "fort," because it is French and "that is how they pronounce it." There are two problems with that. First, the French do not pronounce it "fort." They pronounce it "forte," just Frenchly (with a very quiet final "e.") Are we supposed to use the French "r?" Heavens.

    And more importantly, if we use it in English, it is not longer a French word and we may pronounce it as we want to. Every dictionary from the OED down says "fortay," for the simple reason that it is a useful distinction. Sometime in the 18th Century, it picked up the pronunciation of the Italian musical direction, because that makes it clear you are talking about someone's "strong point."

    So "kyrie." In chanting Latin, it's "kee-ree-eh." In English conversation (as you only chant it in Latin), it's "kih--ree-ay." "Kyrie" has become an English word.

    Which will do nothing to stop the discussion.

    Kenneth
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  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 857
    Which discussion is always fun.
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