cancerous

English

Etymology

From cancer +‎ -ous, from Latin cancer (“crab; tumor, cancer”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkænsəɹəs/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Adjective

cancerous (comparative more cancerous, superlative most cancerous)

1. (oncology) Relating to or affected with cancer.
   • 2002, Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, Penguin Books (2003), page 368:

     On Sunday at five they operated to remove the cancerous kidney.

2. (figuratively) Growing or spreading rapidly to the point of harm.
3. (slang) Extremely unpleasant; detestable.

   Synonyms: (slang) AIDS, (slang) cancer

   I love this show, but the fanbase is so toxic and cancerous.

Antonyms

• noncancerous

Derived terms

• anticancerous
• cancerously
• cancerousness
• noncancerous
• paracancerous
• pericancerous
• precancerous
• procancerous
• uncancerous

 

Related terms

• cancer

Translations

relating to or affected with cancer

• Arabic: سَرَطَانِيّ (saraṭāniyy)
• Catalan: cancerós
• Czech: rakovinný (cs)
• Esperanto: kancera
• Finnish: syöpäinen (fi)
• French: cancéreux (fr)
• Galician: canceroso
• German: krebsartig (de)
• Irish: ailseach
• Italian: canceroso (it)
• Norman: chancreux
• Portuguese: canceroso (pt)
• Romanian: canceros (ro)
• Russian: ра́ковый (ru) (rákovyj)
• Spanish: canceroso
• Turkish: kanserli (tr)
• Welsh: canseraidd

growing or spreading rapidly to the point of harm

• Russian: злока́чественный (ru) (zlokáčestvennyj)