cancel

Formscancels

Pluralcancels

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To make something invalid or void, ending its legal or official force.

   The committee voted to cancel the new regulation.

   A late payment can cancel the warranty entirely.

   Similarundo, annul

   Oppositevalidate, uphold, reinstate, ratify

   Note

   Behind the everyday meaning sits a picture. Anglo-Norman canceler meant to cross out with lines, and its crisscross strokes go back to Latin cancellus, a lattice. Drawing lines through a written order voided it, so the crossing-out sense became the act of voiding itself. Today the verb takes orders, agreements and events as its objects. Undo and belay are near-synonyms.

2. 2
   verbneologismtransitive

   To withdraw public, financial, or moral support from someone regarded as having said or done something unacceptable.

   Critics moved to cancel the author over remarks made years earlier.

   Sponsors canceled the comedian after the controversy spread online.

   Similarboycott, blacklist, blackball, deplatform

   Oppositesupport, endorse, back

   Note

   The newest sense, and the one that turned the verb into a verdict on a person. By 2018 a New York Times headline could announce "Everyone Is Canceled," and the phrase cancel culture followed close behind. It is often passive: someone is canceled or has been canceled. Its neighbors are blacklist and deplatform, but cancel is the one tied to the wider debate over cancel culture.

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To halt production of a television or radio program, ending its run.

   Executives chose to cancel the drama despite its loyal audience.

   The studio canceled the series before the finale was filmed.

   Similaraxe, drop, scrap, end, pull

   Oppositerenew, commission

   Note

   Television's sense of the verb, and its object is the series as a whole, not a single airing. What stops is production itself, so a canceled show makes no new episodes. A single broadcast that is dropped from the schedule is better described as postponed or pulled, which keeps the two situations apart.

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To strike out written matter by drawing lines through it.

   The editor canceled the extra paragraph with bold strokes.

   He would cancel each completed item on the list with a pen.

   Similarstrike, delete, cross, scratch

   Note

   The literal sense the whole word grows from: Latin cancellus, a railing or lattice, by way of Anglo-Norman canceler, "to cross out with lines." Blackstone describes a deed being canceled by having lines drawn over it in the form of latticework. He adds that even in his day the phrase was used figuratively for any way of obliterating or defacing a document.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To offset or counteract something so that opposing effects neutralize each other.

   Higher costs canceled the benefit of the new contract.

   The two errors happened to cancel each other completely.

   Similaroffset, neutralize, negate, counteract, nullify

   Oppositereinforce, amplify

   Note

   Here two forces meet and leave nothing behind. The verb very often takes out, as when feedback cancels out the noise, and with each other it describes a mutual wipe-out. Without either word the sense can blur into the "annul" meaning, so cancel out is the clearer choice when you mean balance rather than calling something off.

   Rising wages and rising prices can cancel out, leaving families no better off.

   Good and bad reviews tend to cancel out over time.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To deface or stamp a postage stamp or similar item so that it cannot be reused.

   The postmark canceled the stamp the moment the letter was processed.

   Machines cancel thousands of stamps an hour in large mail centers.

   Similardeface

7. 7
   verbtransitive

   To eliminate a shared factor from a fraction's numerator and denominator, or from both sides of an equation.

   We can cancel the common factor to reduce the fraction to lowest terms.

   Dividing through lets you cancel the variable from both sides.

   Similareliminate, remove

   Note

   A mathematician's word, and wider than the schoolroom fraction. Dividing a shared factor out of top and bottom is the familiar case, but topologists use it too. In Matić and McCrory's Topology and geometry of manifolds (2003), a 2-handle cancels a 1-handle, leaving the manifold D⁴. In every field it means that two matching pieces annihilate each other and leave something simpler behind.

8. 8
   nounUScountable

   An instance of calling something off; a cancellation.

   The team announced a cancel of the weekend tournament.

   Each cancel had to be logged in the reservation system.

   Note

   A clipped noun made straight from the verb, and marked as American. It counts like any other noun, so you can speak of a cancel or several cancels, and it sits comfortably in booking and scheduling talk. In formal writing, or for readers outside the US, cancellation is the safer word. One specialized use survives online as the Usenet control message.

9. 9
   verbslangtransitive

   To kill a person, used as criminal or violent slang.

   He bragged that his crew would cancel any rival who crossed them.

   The hitman was paid to cancel a witness.

   Similarkill, destroy, eliminate, exterminate, annihilate

   Note

   Criminal slang that borrows the word's bureaucratic flatness: to kill someone is to cancel them, as if striking a name off a list. Because the other senses are so ordinary, the slang depends on context, and it can be misheard as withdrawing public support. Keep it to dialogue or crime fiction. In plain writing it reads as either menacing or comic.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    The suppression or striking out of typeset matter, or of one or more printed pages.

    The publisher ordered a cancel after spotting the printer's slander.

    Repeated cancels drove up the cost of the edition.

    Similarsuppression, deletion, excision

    Note

    Bibliography's noun, and the first of a small set. The same word names the act of cutting typeset matter or pages, the leaf taken out and the leaf put in. Context decides which is meant, so when the difference matters, say "the removed leaf" or "the replacement leaf." Here cancel is the process, and it can be counted: an edition may need several cancels.

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