cantico

See also: cántico and cântico

English edit

Alternative forms edit

canticoy, kantikoy

Etymology edit

From an south Eastern Algonquian language. Compare a Lenape gen'tke'n ("to sing, dance, etc.") as well as Powhatan kantokan (“dance”) and kantikanti (“dance and sing”).^[1]

Noun edit

cantico (plural canticos or canticoes)

A sacred ceremony of the Algonquin tribe that involved dancing in a circle, at which colonists were not welcome.
- 1888, The National Magazine: (Cleveland) a Monthly Journal of American History:
  We lodged in the woods that night, and heard the shouting of the Indians at a cantico, which they were said to hold that evening in a town hard by.
- 1888, William Joseph Buck, William Penn in America:
  The other is their canticoes as they call them which is performed by round dances, sometimes words, then songs, then shouts being in the middle that begin and direct the chorus this they perform with equal fervency but great appearance of joy.
- 2010, Henry Wharton Shoemaker, Robert H. Nelson, Max Stackhouse, Penn's Grandest Cavern, →ISBN:
  With these reassuring words Wisamek again leaped for joy, gyrating like a young brave at a cantico.
A dance festival in which colonial Americans and natives both participated.
- 1876, William Watts Hart Davis, The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania:
  The cash-book tells us of the expense of himself and family going to fairs, and Indian canticoes, probably gotten up to amuse the Proprietary.
- 1877, William Wallace Beach, The Indian Miscellany, page 90:
  The record says that handsome dinners were provided, and the health of King George, the proprietaries, the governor, etc., were drank in high good humor, and at a certain time, at one of these sociable canticoes, the subject of the walk was introduced, and the several deeds and writings shown and explained by way of appeal to the high authority of the Six Nations, against the conduct of their cousins the Delawares, etc.
- 1899, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, a Popular Journal of General Literature:
  Physically strong, tall, well made, with fine dark eyes and a face in which the traces of his handsome youth had not yet been obliterated by portliness and advancing years, still so nimble and athletic that he would jump and run in the sports of his Indian friends, and still so cheerful that he would join them in their dancing “canticoes,” a lover of fast horses, a sprightly and often facetious talker, and fond of good company—he was one of the most gracious and attractive members of the sect whose cause he had long championed with heroic zeal.
- 2007, Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Philadelphia - A History of the City and its People, →ISBN, page 64:
  They enjoyed the fairs and the Indian canticoes but the novelty passed.
(by extension) An uproar; activity that is full of high spirits and violent action.
- 1873, James J. Brooks, Whiskey Drips:
  It was almost like father and son meeting to adjust a little misunderstanding arising from the latter's canticoes.
- 1919, Work with Boys - Volumes 19-20 -, page 56:
  But even the halt, the blind et al. would cut up canticoes and Smash gas fixtures unless they were properly chaperoned.
- 1951, Chester Scott Howland, Thar She Blows!, page 16:
  The whale thought that blow between wind and water was foul, for he cut such infernal canticoes that we could not get on to him.