canton

Definition

A division of a political unit.

Etymology

1530s, from Middle French canton, from Old French canton (“corner”); heraldic sense from the 1570s, geographic sense from c. 1600.

Example Sentences

• "These three millions live in a small canton of Egypt which cannot maintain twenty thousand people"
• "20 May, 1686, Gilbert Burnet, letter from Nimmengen There is another piece of Holbein's, […] in which, in six several cantons, the several parts of our Saviour's passion are represented."
• "According to a peasant novelist from the Bourbonnais, this was just as true in the 1840s as it was before the Revolution: "We had not the slightest notion of the outside world. Beyond the limits of the canton, and beyond the known distances, lay mysterious lands that were thought to be dangerous and inhabited by barbarians.""