canto
Americannoun
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cantos
plural
noun
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music another word for cantus
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a main division of a long poem
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of canto
1580–90; < Italian < Latin cant ( us ) singing, song, equivalent to can ( ere ) to sing + -tus suffix of v. action; cf. cant 1, chant
Explanation
Long books have chapters. Long poems do, too. But a chapter in a long poem is called a canto. There are several famous poems that are divided into cantos, including Dante's Divine Comedy, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, and Byron's Don Juan. Canto is an Italian word coming from Latin which means song or singing. From Italian it was borrowed in English to mean a section of a poem.
Vocabulary lists containing canto
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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Poetry: Structure and Meter
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Reading: Literature - Poetry - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
As usual, Mr. Crutchfield took a scholarly approach, examining historical documents to determine what bel canto might have sounded like during that stay.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
Riccardo Frizza’s fluid conducting drew out the score’s long bel canto lines and limned its propulsive rhythmic structure, and his flexible support of the singers made every aria and ensemble breathe and soar.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2025
“Barber” is one of the most famous operas written in the bel canto style.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 29, 2024
Born in New York in December 1923 to Greek parents, Callas was credited with reviving almost single-handedly the Italian bel canto vocal technique.
From Reuters ● Nov. 9, 2023
Penelope could tell this by the way the children hung on her every word and demanded “More, more!” each time she reached the end of a canto and tried to stop.
From "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling" by Maryrose Wood
Sereni, who recited cantos from Dante in Italian to calm his nerves, was offered a British alias for the parachuting mission.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 17, 2026
It is a revelatory journey but an arduous one, spanning 100 cantos and nearly 15,000 lines replete with references to the Florentine political scene, Christian theology and the world of antiquity.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 17, 2021
The show convenes a suite of drawings employing that technique, made between 1958 and 1960: putative illustrations of the thirty-four cantos of Dante’s Inferno.
From The New Yorker ● May 22, 2017
His most recent album, the remarkable “New Throned King,” layers his smooth and threadlike saxophone playing over cantos and rhythmic patterns from the Arara people of western Cuba.
From New York Times ● May 4, 2017
He’d heard about witches who had things they called books of cantos and wizards with books of spells, but nothing about enchanted books.
From "The Way to Rio Luna" by Zoraida Cordova
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
