Word.ws English Dictionary

cancell

cancell is the obsolete spelling of cancel.

Meaning of cancel

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To cross out something with lines etc.
    • 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.1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC
  2. (transitive) To invalidate or annul something.
    • He cancelled his order on their website.
    Synonyms:
    belay, undo, remit
  3. (transitive) To mark something (such as a used postage stamp) so that it cannot 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) To remove a common factor from both the numerator and denominator of a fraction, or from both sides of an equation.
    • Such a 2-handle cancels the 1-handle so the manifold is D⁴.2003, Gordana Matić, Clint McCrory, Topology and geometry of manifolds, →ISBN, page 182
  6. (transitive) To stop production of a programme.

See all 17 meanings of cancel

Forms of cancell

third-person singular presentcancells
present participlecancelling
past participlecancelled
pastcancelled

Questions about cancell

What is cancell the obsolete spelling of?
Cancell is the obsolete spelling of cancel.

Words near cancell in the dictionary

  1. canceliering
  2. canceliers
  3. canceling
  4. canceling out
  5. canceling someone's Christmas
  6. cancell
  7. cancell'd
  8. cancellability
  9. cancellable
  10. cancellarean
  11. cancellarial

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cancell (page history and authors); cancel (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: “cancell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cancell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.