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Interrupt vs Cancel - What's the difference?

interrupt | cancel |

As verbs the difference between interrupt and cancel

is that interrupt is to disturb or halt an ongoing process or action by interfering suddenly while cancel is to cross out something with lines etc.

As nouns the difference between interrupt and cancel

is that interrupt is (computing) an event that causes a computer to temporarily cease what it was doing and attend to a condition while cancel is a cancellation (us ); (nonstandard in some kinds of english).

interrupt

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To disturb or halt an ongoing process or action by interfering suddenly.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Do not interrupt me in my course.
  • * , chapter=3
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=One saint's day in mid-term a certain newly appointed suffragan-bishop came to the school chapel, and there preached on “The Inner Life.”  He at once secured attention by his informal method, and when presently the coughing of Jarvis […] interrupted the sermon, he altogether captivated his audience with a remark about cough lozenges being cheap and easily procurable.}}
  • To divide; to separate; to break the monotony of.
  • The evenness of the road was not interrupted by a single hill.
  • (computing) To assert to a computer that an exceptional condition must be handled.
  • Antonyms

    * continue * resume

    Noun

    (wikipedia interrupt) (en noun)
  • (computing) An event that causes a computer to temporarily cease what it was doing and attend to a condition
  • The interrupt caused the packet handler routine to run.

    Derived terms

    * hardware interrupt * interrupt handler * non-maskable interrupt, NMI * software interrupt

    cancel

    English

    Alternative forms

    * cancell (obsolete)

    Verb

  • To cross out something with lines etc.
  • * Blackstone
  • 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.
  • To invalidate or annul something.
  • He cancelled his order on their website.
  • * 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.
  • This machine cancels the letters that have a valid zip code.
  • To offset or equalize something.
  • The corrective feedback mechanism cancels out the noise.
  • (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
  • cancelled from heaven
  • (slang) To kill.
  • Synonyms

    *

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • (printing) The suppression on striking out of matter in type, or of a printed page or pages.