Other forms: cancers
Cancer is the disease in which cells grow out of control and spread. Diagnosed with cancer, cancer treatment, a cancer charity.
It is uncountable for the disease in general and countable for a particular kind: three cancers, a rare cancer. The word carries real weight and English has developed careful ways of using it — living with cancer rather than suffering from it, and the battle metaphor is now questioned by many patients. Note the figurative sense, meaning something spreading and destructive within a society, which is strong and best used sparingly. Cancer is also a zodiac sign, capitalised.
1nouncancerA disease in which cells grow uncontrollably.
“She was treated for cancer and has been clear for six years.”
2nounparticularA particular form of the disease.
“It is one of the rarer cancers.”
3noundestructiveSomething destructive spreading through a group.
“He called corruption a cancer on the whole system.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
cancer is a disease.
Latin cancer meant a crab, translating Greek karkinos. The physician Galen is said to have named the disease for the swollen veins around a tumour, which reminded him of a crab's legs. Carcinogen and carcinoma come from the Greek half of the same observation.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker-
Ancient Greek
καρκίνος — crab; ulcer; cancer
Latin
cancer — crab
English, today
cancer
Latin cancer (“crab”), a Ancient Greek καρκίνος (“crab; ulcer; cancer”), possibly cognate, applied to cancerous tumors because of a supposed resemblence between their enlarged veins and the legs of a crab. a doublet of canker and chancre.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA