cancel

• cancell (obsolete)

From Middle English cancellen, from Anglo-Norman canceler (“to cross out with lines”), from Latin cancellare (“to make resemble a lattice”), from cancelli (“a railing or lattice”), diminutive of cancer (“a lattice”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈkænsl/

cancel (third-person singular simple present cancels, present participle cancelling or (US) canceling, simple past and past participle cancelled or (US) canceled)

1. (transitive) To cross out something with lines etc.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Blackstone

     A deed may be avoided by delivering it up to be cancelled; that is, to have lines drawn over it in the form of latticework or cancelli; the phrase is now used figuratively for any manner of obliterating or defacing it.

2. (transitive) To invalidate or annul something.

   He cancelled his order on their website.

   • 1914, Marjorie Benton Cooke, Bambi

     "I don't know what your agreement was, Herr Professor, but if it had money in it, cancel it. I want him to learn that lesson, too."

3. (transitive) To mark something (such as a used postage stamp) so that it can't be reused.

   This machine cancels the letters that have a valid zip code.

4. (transitive) To offset or equalize something.

   The corrective feedback mechanism cancels out the noise.

5. (transitive, mathematics) To remove a common factor from both the numerator and denominator of a fraction, or from both sides of an equation.
6. (transitive, media) To stop production of a programme.
7. (printing, dated) To suppress or omit; to strike out, as matter in type.
8. (obsolete) To shut out, as with a railing or with latticework; to exclude.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     cancelled from heaven

9. (slang) To kill.

• belay

• autocancel
• cancel someone's Christmas
• cancel out
• canceler
• recancel
• cancelable
• precancel
• uncancel

cancel (plural cancels)

1. A cancellation (US); (nonstandard in some kinds of English).
   1. (Internet) A control message posted to Usenet that serves to cancel a previously posted message.
2. (obsolete) An enclosure; a boundary; a limit.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Jeremy Taylor

     A prison is but a retirement, and opportunity of serious thoughts, to a person whose spirit […] desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body.

3. (printing) The suppression on striking out of matter in type, or of a printed page or pages.
4. (printing) The page thus suppressed.
5. (printing) The page that replaces it.

• autocancel
• dumb cancel
• killer cancel
• mute cancel
• precancel

• chancel
• cancellation
• chancellery
• chancellor
• chancery

• cancel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• cancel in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• cancel at OneLook Dictionary Search