Cancelled

How to spell cancelled

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cancelled

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cancelled mean?

1. verbDecided that a planned event, arrangement or service will not happen, or formally annulled something.

Cancelled in a sentence

• The airline cancelled our flight because of the storm.

• They cancelled the contract after the supplier missed every deadline.

Where does cancelled come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'cancel', which traces back to the Latin verb cancellare, meaning 'to cross out with lines that look like a lattice'. That verb grew from cancelli, the word for a grating, railing or lattice of crossed bars, itself a diminutive of cancer in the sense of 'crossbars'. The image is wonderfully literal: a Roman clerk struck through unwanted writing by drawing a grid of crossed lines over it, so the text was caged behind bars. English took the word in through Old French canceler during the 1300s, at first meaning to annul a document by lining it out, then widening to the modern sense of calling something off. The doubling of the l in the British and Canadian spelling follows the older convention of doubling a final consonant after a single vowel before a suffix, which is exactly the spot where writers exposed to the single-l American form start to hesitate.

How the word is built

• cancel (to cross out)
• -led (doubled consonant
• past-tense -ed)

British and American spelling

Cancelled is the British spelling. American English spells it canceled.