cantle

Etymology

From Middle English cantle, cantel, from Old Northern French cantel, Old French chantel (Modern French chanteau, Bourguignon chainteâ), from Medieval Latin cantellus, diminutive of Latin cantus (“corner”). Compare cant (Etymology 3).

noun

1. (obsolete) A splinter, slice, or sliver broken off something.
   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
   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. (Scotland) The top of the head.
4. (Scotland) On many styles of sporran, a metal arc along the top of the pouch, usually fronting the clasp.

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive) To cut into pieces.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To cut out from.