Obs. [It.: lit. ‘the cancer (take you!)’] An imprecation. (Cf. plague! pest!)
c. 1600. N. Breton, Philiston’s Lett. (Gros.), 63 (Hoppe). Now and then [he would] rise off his bed in a rage, knitting his brows with cancro.
1612. Chapman, Widowes T., in Dodsley (1780), VI. 211. Cancro! what, thy husband’s body?
