Also (4 cancre), 5 canser, (6 canker). [L. cancer (cancrum) crab, also the malignant tumor so called. (So in Greek, καρκίνος, καρκίνωμα ‘crab’ and ‘cancer’; the tumor, according to Galen, was so called from the swollen veins surrounding the part affected bearing a resemblance to a crab’s limbs.) The word was adopted in OE. as cancer, cancor for the disease, reinforced after 1100 by the Norman Fr. cancre, which gave the ME. and modern CANKER. The original Latin form was re-introduced in ME. in the astronomical sense, and about 1600 in the medical, as a more technical and definite term than canker, which had come to be applied to corroding ulcerations generally. (Cf. also CHANCRE, in 17th and 18th c. shanker.)]
1. A crab. (Now only as a term of Zoology.)
1562. Bulleyn, Bk. Simples (1579), 76. [This castor … loueth to feede vpon Crabs and Cankers of the Sea.]
1607. Topsell, Serpents, 686. The like things are reported of the Asps, Cancers, and Tortoyses of Egypt.
1650. Fuller, Pisgah, IV. iii. 47. The slowest snail makes more speed forth-right, than the swiftest retrograde Cancer.
1791. E. Darwin, Bot. Gard., I. 121. The anchor’d Pinna, and his Cancer-friend.
b. Med. ‘A term for an eight-tailed bandage; those resembling, it was thought, a crab’s legs’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.). Also called cancer-bandage.
1753. in Chambers, Cycl. Supp.
2. Astron. a. The Zodiacal constellation of the Crab, lying between Gemini and Leo. b. The fourth of the twelve signs or divisions of the Zodiac (♋), beginning at the most northerly point of the ecliptic or summer solstitial point, which the sun enters on the 21st of June. The sign originally coincided with the constellation, but on account of the precession of the equinoxes, the first point of Cancer is now in the constellation Gemini. Tropic of Cancer: the northern Tropic, forming a tangent to the ecliptic at the first point of Cancer, about 23° 28′ from the equator.
c. 1391. Chaucer, Astrol. (1872), 9. In this heued of cancer is the grettest declinacioun northward of the sonne … this signe of cancre is cleped the tropik of Somer.
c. 1400. Destr. Troy, 2344. In the season of somer, er the sun rose, As it come into canser.
1594. Blundevil, Exerc., VI. xiv. (ed. 7), 624. The Sunne being in the fourth degree of Cancer.
1606. Shaks., Tr. & Cr., II. iii. 206. And adde more Coles to Cancer, when he burnes With entertaining great Hiperion.
1727. Thomson, Summer, 44. When … Cancer reddens with the solar blaze.
1833. Macaulay, War Success. Sp., Ess. (1854), I. 239/1. The American dependencies of the Castilian crown still extended far to the North of Cancer and far to the South of Capricorn.
1859. Pictures of Heavens, 32. Cancer … perhaps the Zodiacal sign was so called because the sun begins to return back … when it enters this sign, and its retrograde motion may be represented by that of a crab.
3. Pathol. A malignant growth or tumor in different parts of the body, that tends to spread indefinitely and to reproduce itself, as also to return after removal; it eats away or corrodes the part in which it is situated, and generally ends in death.
The earlier name was CANKER, q.v.
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. Gloss., Cancer is a swelling or sore comming of melancholy bloud, about which the veins appeare of a blacke or swert colour, spread in manner of a Creifish clees.
1671. Salmon, Syn. Med., I. xlviii. 114. Καρκινος, Cancer is a hard round Tumour blew or blackish having pain and beating.
1746–7. Hervey, Medit. (1758), II. 58. On some, a relentless Cancer has fastened its envenomed Teeth.
1768. G. White, Selborne, xviii. (1853), 80. The wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads.
1877. Roberts, Handbk. Med., I. (ed. 3), 274. Cancer is decidedly a hereditary disease.
b. fig. An evil figured as an eating sore.
1651. Baxter, Inf. Bapt., 274. This Cancer is a fretting and growing evil.
a. 1711. Ken, Edmund, Poet. Wks. 1721, II. 194. Sloth is a Cancer, eating up that Time Princes should cultivate for Things sublime.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), II. 355. The incurable cancer of the soul.
† 4. A plant: possibly cancer-wort (see 5).
1546. Langley, trans. Pol. Verg. de Invent., I. xvii. 31 b. Yf he be stynged with a spider, he healeth himself with eatinge Pylles or a certain herbe named Cancer.
1609. Heywood, Brit. Troye. Who taught the poore beast having poison tasted, To seek th’ hearbe cancer, and by that to cure him?
5. Comb. (in sense 3), as cancer-cell, -element, -serum; cancer-root, cancer-wort: see quots.
1876. trans. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol., 479. Cancer-juice consists of *cancer-cells and a usually scanty, fluid substance, the intercellular substance or cancer-serum.
1768. G. White, Selborne, xviii. (1789), 53. This woman … having set up for a *cancer-doctress.
1714. Phil. Trans., XXIX. 64. To this they add a Root call’d the *Cancer Root.
1884. Miller, Plant-n., Cancer Root, Conopholis (Orobanche) americana and Epiphegus virginiana. —— one-flowered, Aphyllon uniflorum.
1597. Gerard, Herbal, Index (Britten & Holland), *Cancerwoort, that is Fluellen, 504.
1884. Miller, Plant-n., Cancer-wort, Linaria spuria and L. Elatine; also an old name for the genus Veronica.
