Thieves' Cant
- By
Hist! Bene lightmans to thy quarromes.
Rogues have always had their own way of talking. This addon gives you one. Only rogues can speak it or read it back.
| You type | Everyone nearby reads |
|---|---|
| Meet me at the inn tonight, friend. Bring your dagger. | Hist! Meet me at the libken this darkmans, pall. Bring thy chive. |
Another rogue running Thieves' Cant sees your English, marked [Thieves' Cant], the way a racial language you know shows up. Everyone else sees the cant.
Real slang, mostly
Thieves' cant was the slang of English cutpurses, beggars and highwaymen. Three old books recorded it: Thomas Harman's A Caveat for Common Cursetors (1567), B.E.'s A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew (about 1699) and Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811). Most of the words in the addon come from them, and the phrasebook shows which book each one is from and quotes its entry. The greeting at the top of this page is Harman's: good morning to your body.
Names for Azeroth's races, classes and cities are ours, made from the old words. A mage is a glimcove (glim, a light; cove, a man), a dwarf an ironcove, the auction house the fenceken (a fence's house) and Booty Bay is Swagbay. The phrasebook marks these as adapted.
How to use it
Click the Stealth icon at the end of your chat box. While it glows, what you type goes out in cant, and a preview above the box shows the line before you send it. Click it again to speak plainly. Emotes, slash commands and lines with nothing to translate are sent as typed, so "lol" stays "lol".
Right-click the icon for the phrasebook and Decipher, a short word quiz. You can search the phrasebook or browse it by topic. Hover a word for its old definition, or click it to put it in chat.
Finding other rogues
When you log in, the addon quietly asks your guild which rogues run Thieves' Cant, and it asks your group each time you join one. You get one line with their names and a [Salute] link for each. Nothing shows in anyone else's chat, and "Check my guild and group" in settings turns it off.
Outside your guild and group, target or mouse over a rogue of your faction and the addon asks them the same way. It works if either of you looks at the other. Neither WoW Forever nor retail lets addons broadcast to everyone nearby, so you won't hear about a stranger until one of you has targeted or moused over the other.
The cant only works if your friends have it too. "Share it" in settings (or /cant share) gives you the addon's link, ready to copy.
Also
Learning mode starts you with twenty words. You learn the rest by using them, hearing them three times, or answering them in Decipher. Until then they stay in cant, greyed out, in other rogues' lines.
Cast phrases add a line now and then when you use a rogue ability, like "Vex eases a famble into the merchant's cly." Only you see them.
While you're stealthed, the addon sends nothing you didn't type yourself: no salutes, no emotes, no hidden messages.
Good to know
- Made for WoW Forever. It loads on retail too, but I haven't played it there yet. If something breaks on retail, tell me in the comments.
- Rogues only. Other classes can install it, but they see the cant like everyone else.
- English game clients only.
- Trial and veteran accounts can't send addon messages, so the salute won't work for them. Reading cant still does.
- In say and yell, the other faction only sees your racial language, so they can't read your cant.
- Works with Prat, ElvUI, Chattynator, WIM, Yapper, Total RP 3 and Chattery. If Glyphic or Languages is translating a channel, Thieves' Cant leaves that channel alone.
- Players on different versions can read each other. A word never changes meaning between releases.
/cantlists every command. Settings are under Settings, then AddOns.
Bene darkmans, pall.
Thieves' Cant Team
