canst

[kanst]

verb

Archaic.

1. 2nd person singular present tense of can.

canst

/ kænst /

verb

1. archaic,  when used with the pronoun thou or its relative form, a form of can 1

Example Sentences

When Romeo, after secretly marrying Juliet, encounters truculent Tybalt, he tells him, “I do protest I never injured thee,/But love thee better than thou canst devise,/Till thou shall know the reason of my love.”

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“Canst thou climb the ladder or wilt go pickaback? Tis a great height, but there are resting places.”

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“Thou canst but try,” said John.

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Some of the lines most applicable today: “Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportion’d thought his act. . . . Give every man thy ear but few thy voice. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. . . . This above all: to thine own self be true. . . . And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

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As the cardinal says, “Dost thou imagine, thou canst slide on blood,/And not be tainted?”

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