cantation

English

Etymology

Latin cantatio.

Noun

cantation (usually uncountable, plural cantations)

1. (obsolete) A singing.
   • 1838 August, Paddy the Piper, “Tales of the Parish Wake”, in Harrison's monthly collection, number 3, page 135:

     These words were jabbered as fast as ever tongue could utter them, and when he had finished, up he jumped, again commenced the same mad rotations, and broke into the same extravagant cantation as before.

   • 1875, Wilson Flagg, “To The Mocking-Bird”, in The Birds and Seasons of New England, page 293:

     When we have come to hear thy sweet oblation Of love and joyance from thy sylvan station, Why, in the place of musical cantation, Balk us with pratings?

   • 1895, Ephraim Cutter, Phonation:

     For thirty years there has seemed to me no difference between phonation (speech) and cantation (song), save in the length of the basic vowel sounds.

   • 2011, Marilyn Webb, The Good Death:

     When we use it with the dying it has to do with helping people unbind from the body, so we provide a lot of music outside of time—Gregorian chant, Hebrew cantation [Chalice workers don't use only Christian music].

2. Synonym of incantation
   • 1836, Edward Howard, Rattlin, the Reefer, page 193:

     Whether or not there was any mystic virtue in the exorcisory cantation of the previous night, I cannot determine; but it is certain, that next morning, though headaches abounded among our officers, indications of the yellow fever there were none.

   • 2012, David B. Zilberman, Robert S. Cohen, The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought, page 104:

     This literature contained a corpus of texts, most probably one for each school of Vedic cantation (the words śakhā, 'school' or 'branch', speaks in favor of this guess).

   • 2021, Louis Bruno, Come home Young One:

     He picked up the bows and began a soft cantation, long spoken by his father before him.