CANCEL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Cancel

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/kˈænsəl/ Listen

verb

Cancel v. i. (past & past part. canceled or cancelled; pres. part. canceling or cancelling)

1.

To inclose or surround, as with a railing, or with latticework. (Obs.) "A little obscure place canceled in with iron work is the pillar or stump at which... our Savior was scourged."

2.

To shut out, as with a railing or with latticework; to exclude. (Obs.) "Canceled from heaven."

3.

To cross and deface, as the lines of a writing, or as a word or figure; to mark out by a cross line; to blot out or obliterate. "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; though the phrase is now used figuratively for any manner of obliterating or defacing it."

4.

To annul or destroy; to revoke or recall. "The indentures were canceled." "He was unwilling to cancel the interest created through former secret services, by being refractory on this occasion."

5.

(Print.) To suppress or omit; to strike out, as matter in type.

Canceled figures (Print), figures cast with a line across the face., as for use in arithmetics.

Synonyms: To blot out; obliterate; deface; erase; efface; expunge; annul; abolish; revoke; abrogate; repeal; destroy; do away; set aside. See Abolish.

noun

Cancel n.

1.

An inclosure; a boundary; a limit. (Obs.) "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."

2.

(Print)

(a)

The suppression or striking out of matter in type, or of a printed page or pages.

(b)

The part thus suppressed.

See images of 'Cancel'

Etymology of 'Cancel'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Cancel" Quotes from Famous Books

... rates of interest and maturing in nineteen different periods of time. Parts of it had been borrowed in times of distress at high rates; but after the struggle was successfully ended, the credit of the government was good, and enough money could be obtained at low interest charges to cancel the old debt and establish a new one with the interest account correspondingly reduced. Hugh McCulloch and John Sherman as secretaries of the treasury were most influential in accomplishing this transition, and by 1879 the process was completed and a yearly saving ...

— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... like you to forget, And cancel in the welcome of your smile My deep arrears of debt, And with the putting forth of both your hands To sweep away the bars my folly set Between us—bitter thoughts, and harsh de- mands, And reckless deeds that seemed untrue To love, when all the while My heart was aching through and through ...

— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke

... But"—and he produced ten genuine one-thousand-dollar bills and exhibited them to Mr. Badger at a safe distance—"I now on behalf of Mrs. Effingham make you a legal tender of the ten thousand dollars you have just paid out to cancel her note, and I demand the return of the securities. Incidentally I beg to inform you that they are not worth the paper they ...

— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be the full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry that you regret; you would rather cancel some lack-lustre periods between sleep and waking in the class. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide ...

— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... case you may continue to use your force; finish him off." It says, on the contrary, "Then we'll see that B does not use his force; we'll restrain him, we won't have either of you using force. We'll cancel it and suppress it wherever it rears its head." For there is this paradox at the basis of all civilized intercourse: force between men has but one use—to see that force settles no ...

— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

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