Word.ws English Dictionary

cancel out

cancel out verb: to neutralize the effect of.

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To neutralize the effect of.
    • We can cancel the aberration out by adding another filter.
    • […] there is every likelihood that the current pattern of increase would eventually cancel out each expensive improvement, as has happened with the ten-car scheme.1960 March, “Talking of Trains: The problem of the peak”, in Trains Illustrated, page 130
  2. (intransitive) Of two or more things: to neutralize each other's effect.
    • Love and hate cancel out.

Synonyms of cancel out

Forms of cancel out

third-person singular presentcancels out
present participle UScanceling out
present participle UKcancelling out
past participle UScanceled out
past UScanceled out
past participle UKcancelled out
past UKcancelled out

Questions about cancel out

What does cancel out mean?
Cancel out means to neutralize the effect of.
What part of speech is cancel out?
Cancel out is a verb.
What is the past tense of cancel out?
The past tense of cancel out is canceled out.

Words near cancel out in the dictionary

  1. cancanned
  2. cancanning
  3. cancans
  4. cancel
  5. cancel culture
  6. cancel out
  7. cancel someone's Christmas
  8. cancel-worthy
  9. cancelability
  10. cancelable
  11. cancelated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cancel out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cancel out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cancel_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.