cantle

noun

1. (obsolete)A splinter, slice, or sliver broken off something.

   “See how this river comes me cranking in, / And cuts me from the best of all my land / A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.”

   “Their armors forged were of metal frail; / On every side thereof huge cantles flies; / The land was strewed all with plate and mail, / That on the earth, on that their warm blood lies.”

   “In one cantle of his law.”

2. The raised back of a saddle.

   “He recognised a horse when he saw one, and could do more than fill a cantle.”

   “Next day, he returned with a camel-saddle of equal beauty, the long brass horns of its cantles adorned with exquisite old Yemeni engraving.”

   “The traps were packed in the splitwillow basket that his father wore with the shoulderstraps loosed so that the bottom of the basket carried on the cantle of the saddle behind him.”

3. (Scotland)The top of the head.
4. (Scotland)On many styles of sporran, a metal arc along the top of the pouch, usually fronting the clasp.

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive)To cut into pieces.
2. (obsolete, transitive)To cut out from.