[f. prec. sb.] trans. To eat into as a cancer; to eat (its way) slowly and incessantly like a cancer.
1840. De Quincey, Casuistry Rom. Meals, Wks. III. 280. Other things advance per saltum—they do not silently cancer their way onwards. Ibid. (1858), Autobiog. Sk., Wks. (1863), XIV. 93. The strulbrug of Swift … was a wreck, a shell, that had been burned hollow and cancered by the fierce furnace of life.
Hence Cancered ppl. a., affected with cancer.
a. 1774. Goldsmith, Nat. Hist. (1776), VII. 102. The application of toads to a cancered breast.
