Definition of "canst" []

• Archaic A second person singular present tense of can1. (auxiliary-verb)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "What a flood of remembrances must then have rushed over the penitent Peter! how he must have thought to himself, 'So soon, so soon is the "canst not" changed into a _canst_!"
• "Authorised Version, 'If thou canst _believe_' -- throwing, as it were, the responsibility on the man -- but it is a quotation of the father's own word, 'If Thou _canst_,' as if He waved it aside with superb recognition of its utter unfitness to the present case."
• "491 But one of the merchants said to him, Know thou, O my son, that the value of this kerchief is an hundred dinars at most and that to an eager purchaser, and if this Frank pay thee down a thousand for it, thy profit will be nine hundred dinars, and what gain canst thou desire greater than this gain?"