canto

American  

[kan-toh] / ˈkæn toʊ /

noun

• cantos
  plural

1. one of the main or larger divisions of a long poem.

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canto British  

/ ˈkæntəʊ /

noun

1. music another word for cantus

2. a main division of a long poem

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• cantos
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

canto cantos

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 Crutchfield took a scholarly approach, examining historical documents to determine what bel canto might have sounded like during that stay.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

The choral writing, in Sardinian dialect, reflects the traditional canto a tenore, giving it an earthy, ritualistic flavor.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026

Translating literally from the Italian into “beautiful singing,” bel canto is all about “appreciating the voices first and foremost,” says Peleggi.

From Seattle Times ● Apr. 29, 2024

Born Maria Anna Sophie Cecilia Kalogeropoulos in New York in December 1923 to Greek parents, Callas was credited with the almost single-handed revival of the Italian bel canto vocal technique.

From Reuters ● Oct. 25, 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