different between cancel vs smutch

English

Alternative forms

• cancell (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English cancellen, from Anglo-Norman canceler (“to cross out with lines”) (modern French chanceler (“unsteady move”)), from Latin cancell? (“to make resemble a lattice”), from cancellus (“a railing or lattice”), diminutive of cancer (“a lattice”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?kænsl?/
• Hyphenation: can?cel

Verb

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

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.

2. (transitive) To invalidate or annul something.

   He cancelled his order on their website.

   • 1914, Marjorie Benton Cooke, Bambi

     "I don't know what your agreement was, Herr Professor, but if it had money in it, cancel it. I want him to learn that lesson, too."

3. (transitive) To mark something (such as a used postage stamp) so that it can't 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, mathematics) To remove a common factor from both the numerator and denominator of a fraction, or from both sides of an equation.
6. (transitive, media) To stop production of a programme.
7. (printing, dated) To suppress or omit; to strike out, as matter in type.
8. (obsolete) To shut out, as with a railing or with latticework; to exclude.
9. (slang) To kill.

   (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)

10. (transitive, neologism) To cease to provide financial or moral support to (someone deemed unacceptable). Compare cancel culture.
    • 2018, Jonah Engel Bromwich, in The New York Times [1]

    • 2019, Christopher Hooton, in VICE [2]

    • 2020 July 3, Kristi Noem speech at Mount Rushmore transcribed by C-SPAN[4]:

      To attempt to cancel the founding generation is an attempt to cancel our own freedoms.

Synonyms

• (invalidate or annul): belay
• (kill): take care of; see also Thesaurus:kill
• (cease supporting someone deemed unacceptable): blacklist; see also Thesaurus:boycott

Derived terms

• autocancel
• cancel someone's Christmas
• cancel out
• canceler
• recancel
• cancelable
• precancel
• uncancel

Descendants

• ? Gulf Arabic: ????? (kansal)
• ? Welsh: canslo

Translations

Noun

cancel (plural cancels)

1. A cancellation (US); (nonstandard in some kinds of English).
   1. (Internet) A control message posted to Usenet that serves to cancel a previously posted message.
2. (obsolete) An enclosure; a boundary; a limit.

   • A prison is but a retirement, and opportunity of serious thoughts, to a person whose spirit […] desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body.

3. (printing) The suppression on striking out of matter in type, or of a printed page or pages.
4. (printing) The page thus suppressed.
5. (printing) The page that replaces it.

Derived terms

• autocancel
• dumb cancel
• killer cancel
• mute cancel
• precancel

Translations

Related terms

• chancel
• cancellation
• chancellery
• chancellor
• chancery

Further reading

• cancel in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• cancel in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• cancel at OneLook Dictionary Search

Spanish

Noun

cancel m (plural canceles)

1. partition; wall

English

Verb

smutch (third-person singular simple present smutches, present participle smutching, simple past and past participle smutched)

1. To soil, stain or smudge.
   • c. 1610,, William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act I, Scene 2,^[1]

     Why, that’s my bawcock. What, hast smutch’d thy nose?

     They say it is a copy out of mine.

   • 1616, Ben Jonson, The Divell is an Asse, London, 1641, Act II, Scene 6, p. 26,^[2]

     Have you seene but a bright Lilly grow,

     Before rude hands have touch’d it?

     Have you mark’d but the fall of Snow,

     Before the soyle hath smutch’d it?

   • 1909, O. Henry, “Supply and Demand” in Options, New York: Harper, p. 126,^[3]

     And then in came a wee girl of seven, with dirty face and pure blue eyes and a smutched and insufficient dress.

   • 1928, Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown’s Body, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, “Invocation,” p. 7,^[4]

     Receive them all—and should you choose to touch them

     With one slant ray of quick, American light,

     Even the dust will have no power to smutch them,

     Even the worst will glitter in the night.

Noun

smutch (plural smutches)

1. A stain, smudge or blot.
   • 1629, John Smith, Essex doue, presenting the world with a few of her oliue branches, London: George Edwardes, “An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer,” p. 124,^[5]

     As let a man sticke a Candle to a stone wall, though the Candle do not burne through it, yet it will leaue a shrewd smutch behind it, soyling the wall, so as it will not easily be wyped out. Thus it is with tentations, though they doe not all the mischiefe they would and might doe, they will yet be sure to leaue an impression of filth and staines behinde them.

   • 1785, William Cowper, The Task, London: J. Johnson, Book 4, p. 168,^[6]

     […] Examine well

     His milk-white hand. The palm is hardly clean—

     But here and there an ugly smutch appears.

     Foh! ’twas a bribe that left it.

   • 1849, Robert Browning, “The Flight of the Duchess” in Poems, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 2, p. 390,^[7]

     I could favour you with sundry touches

     Of the paint-smutches with which the Duchess

     Heightened the mellowness of her cheek’s yellowness

   • 1903, Henry James, The Ambassadors London: Methuen, Chapter 12, page 174,^[8]

     Strether felt his character receive, for the instant, a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed.

   • 1979, Patrick White, The Twyborn Affair, Penguin, 1981, Part 3, p. 411,^[9]

     Looking out of her window, she was alerted by a smutch of bronze light glowering on this Anglo-Flemish landscape.

Related terms

• smut

Anagrams

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