cancer

Pronunciation

• IPA: UK /ˈkæn.sə/, US /ˈkæn.sɚ/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cancer (“a crab, a creeping ulcer, tumor, the constellation Cancer”),^[2][3] a form modelled on and cognate with Greek Ancient Greek καρκίνος (karkínos), which has the same three meanings, crab, tumor and constellation.^[2][3] Barnhart also compares Sanskrit karkaṭa- “crab” and karkara- “hard”,^[3][4] and Etymonline takes the words to a reduplicated form of Proto-Indo-European *kar- (“hard”).^[2][3] The Greek physician Galen explained the medical sense by the likeness of the swollen veins around the sore to a crab's legs.^[3][5][6] Its doublet canker was the usual form for the disease until the 17th century.^[5][6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old English cancer, a spreading sore, malignant or not, is found about 1000 in Ælfric;^[3][2] the sign of the zodiac is from about 1380, in Chaucer's translation of Boethius.^[3][7]

Semantic evolution

The Old English word was displaced by the French-influenced canker^[2][5] but was reintroduced in the modern medical sense, a malignant tumor, about 1600,^[2] first in Holland's translation of Pliny (1601).^[3][7] When canker returned to the language of medicine as cancer, canker became the word for various plant diseases.^[5] The figurative sense, a spreading evil, is from 1651.^[7] A crab itself was a cancer from 1562, later only in zoology.^[7] A person born under the sign of Cancer is from 1894.^[2][7] Since the sun is in Cancer at the summer solstice, Latin writers linked the constellation with summer heat and the south.^[2] Cancer stick, “a cigarette”, is slang from 1959.^[2] Cancerous is from 1563.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – Old English, a spreading sore.^[3]
• c. 1380 – the sign of the zodiac.^[3]
• 1562 – a crab.^[7]
• 1563 – cancerous.^[3]
• 1601 – a malignant tumor.^[3][7]
• 1651 – a spreading evil.^[7]
• 1894 – a person born under Cancer.^[2][7]
• 1959 – cancer stick.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells that can spread to other parts of the body; a malignant tumor.
2. Something evil that spreads and destroys.
3. Cancer: A constellation between Gemini and Leo; the fourth sign of the zodiac; a person born under it.

Word family

• cancerous
• cancerously
• cancered
• cancerousness
• anticancer
• canceration
• precancer
• cancer stick

Related words

• canker
• carcinogen
• chancre
• precancerous
• carcinoma
• hard

Usage notes

In Scots cancer was a name of the red campion, and in northeast Scotland of the burying beetle, from the belief that its bite caused the disease.^[8]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b Pearsall, Judy, ed. (1998), The New Oxford Dictionary of English, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)