• Cancer

    Pronunciation

    • RP IPA: /ˈkænsÉ™/
    • AusE IPA: /ˈkæːnsÉ™/
    • GenAm IPA: /ˈkænsÉš/
    • Rhymes: -ænsÉ™(ɹ)

    Origin

    From Latin cancer ("crab"), from Ancient Greek καρκίνος (karkinos, "crab"); applied to cancerous tumors because the enlarged veins resembled the legs of a crab.

    Full definition of cancer

    Noun

    cancer

    (plural cancers)
    1. (medicine, oncology, disease) A disease in which the cells of a tissue undergo uncontrolled (and often rapid) proliferation.
      • 2006, Edwin Black, Internal Combustion Chapter 1, If successful, Edison and Ford—in 1914—would move society away from the...hazards of gasoline cars: air and water pollution, noise and noxiousness, constant coughing and the undeniable rise in cancers caused by smoke exhaust particulates.
      • 2013-06-22, Snakes and ladders, Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you.
    2. (figuratively) Something which spreads within something else, damaging the latter.1999, Bruce Clifford Ross-Larson, Effective Writing, Sierra Leone's post-dictator problems are almost absurd in their breadth. It once exported rice; now it can't feed itself. The life span of the average citizen is 39, the shortest in Africa. Unemployment stands at 87 percent and tuberculosis is spreading out of control. Corruption, brazen and ubiquitous, is a cancer on the economy.

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