cancer

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin cancer (“crab”), by metathesis from Ancient Greek καρκίνος (karkínos, “crab”); applied to cancerous tumors because the enlarged veins resembled the legs of a crab. Doublet of canker and chancre.

noun

1. (medicine, oncology, pathology) A disease in which the cells of a tissue undergo uncontrolled (and often rapid) proliferation.
   If successful, Edison and Ford—in 1914—would move society away from the[…]hazards of gasoline cars: air and water pollution, noise and noxiousness, constant coughing and the undeniable rise in cancers caused by smoke exhaust particulates. 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion
   Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you. 2013-06-22, “Snakes and ladders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 76
2. (figurative) Something damaging that spreads throughout something else.
   Sierra Leone's post-dictator problems are almost absurd in their breadth. It once exported rice; now it can't feed itself. The life span of the average citizen is 39, the shortest in Africa. Unemployment stands at 87 percent and tuberculosis is spreading out of control. Corruption, brazen and ubiquitous, is a cancer on the economy. 1999, Bruce Clifford Ross-Larson, Effective Writing, page 134

adj

1. (slang) Extremely unpleasant and annoying.
   I used to love this game, but the new meta is straight up cancer.