Cancel vs Decline - What's the difference?
cancel | decline |
To cross out something with lines etc.
* Blackstone
To invalidate or annul something.
* 1914 , (Marjorie Benton Cooke), Bambi
*:"I don't know what your agreement was, Herr Professor, but if it had money in it, cancel it. I want him to learn that lesson, too."
To mark something (such as a used postage stamp) so that it can't be reused.
To offset or equalize something.
(mathematics) To remove a common factor from both the numerator and denominator of a fraction, or from both sides of an equation.
(media) To stop production of a programme.
(printing, dated) To suppress or omit; to strike out, as matter in type.
(obsolete) To shut out, as with a railing or with latticework; to exclude.
* Milton
(slang) To kill.
A cancellation (US ); (nonstandard in some kinds of English).
# (Internet) A control message posted to Usenet that serves to cancel a previously posted message.
(obsolete) An inclosure; a boundary; a limit.
(printing) The suppression on striking out of matter in type, or of a printed page or pages.
Downward movement, fall.(rfex)
A sloping downward, e.g. of a hill or road.(rfex)
(senseid)A weakening.(rfex)
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-01
, author=Philip E. Mirowski
, title=Harms to Health from the Pursuit of Profits
, volume=100, issue=1, page=87
, magazine=
A reduction or diminution of activity.
*
To move downwards, to fall, to drop.
To become weaker or worse.
To bend downward; to bring down; to depress; to cause to bend, or fall.
* Thomson
* Spenser
To cause to decrease or diminish.
* Beaumont and Fletcher
* Burton
To turn or bend aside; to deviate; to stray; to withdraw.
* Bible, Psalms cxix. 157
To refuse, forbear.
* Massinger
* , chapter=7
, title= To inflect for case, number and sometimes gender.
* Ascham
(by extension) To run through from first to last; to repeat like a schoolboy declining a noun.
(American football) To reject a penalty against the opposing team, usually because the result of accepting it would benefit the non-penalized team less than the preceding play.
In transitive terms the difference between cancel and decline
is that cancel is to offset or equalize something while decline is to refuse, forbear.cancel
English
Alternative forms
* cancell (obsolete)Verb
- A deed may be avoided by delivering it up to be cancelled ; that is, to have lines drawn over it in the form of latticework or cancelli; the phrase is now used figuratively for any manner of obliterating or defacing it.
- He cancelled his order on their website.
- This machine cancels the letters that have a valid zip code.
- The corrective feedback mechanism cancels out the noise.
- cancelled from heaven
Synonyms
*Noun
(en noun)- A prison is but a retirement, and opportunity of serious thoughts, to a person whose spiritdesires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the body. — Jeremy Taylor.
External links
* * *decline
English
Noun
(en noun)citation, passage=In an era when political leaders promise deliverance from decline through America’s purported preeminence in scientific research, the news that science is in deep trouble in the United States has been as unwelcome as a diagnosis of leukemia following the loss of health insurance.}}
- It is also pertinent to note that the current obvious decline in work on holarctic hepatics most surely reflects a current obsession with cataloging and with nomenclature of the organisms—as divorced from their study as living entities.
Antonyms
* inclineVerb
(declin)- in melancholy deep, with head declined
- And now fair Phoebus gan decline in haste / His weary wagon to the western vale.
- You have declined his means.
- He knoweth his error, but will not seek to decline it.
- a line that declines from straightness
- conduct that declines from sound morals
- Yet do I not decline from thy testimonies.
- Could I decline this dreadful hour?
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=“[…] This is Mr. Churchill, who, as you are aware, is good enough to come to us for his diaconate, and, as we hope, for much longer; and being a gentleman of independent means, he declines to take any payment.” Saying this Walden rubbed his hands together and smiled contentedly.}}
- after the first declining of a noun and a verb
- (Shakespeare)
- The team chose to decline the fifteen-yard penalty because their receiver had caught the ball for a thirty-yard gain.