| 释义 |
▪ I. cancer, n.|ˈkænsə(r)|
Also (4 cancre), 5 canser, (6 canker).
[L. cancer (cancrum) crab, also the malignant tumour so called. (So in Greek, καρκίνος, καρκίνωµα ‘crab’ and ‘cancer’; the tumour, according to Galen, was so called from the swollen veins surrounding the part affected bearing a resemblance to a crab's limbs.) The word was adopted in OE. as cancer, cancor for the disease, reinforced after 1100 by the Norman Fr. cancre, which gave the ME. and modern canker. The original Latin form was re-introduced in ME. in the astronomical sense, and about 1600 in the medical, as a more technical and definite term than canker, which had come to be applied to corroding ulcerations generally. (Cf. also chancre, in 17th and 18th c. shanker.)]
1. a. A crab. (Now only as a term of Zoology.)
1562W. Bullein Bk. Simples (1579) 76 [This castor..loueth to feede vpon Crabs and Cankers of the Sea.] 1607Topsell Serpents 686 The like things are reported of the Asps, Cancers, and Tortoyses of Egypt. 1650Fuller Pisgah IV. iii. 47 The slowest snail makes more speed forth-right, than the swiftest retrograde Cancer. 1791E. Darwin Bot. Gard. i. 121 The anchor'd Pinna, and his Cancer-friend.
b. Med. ‘A term for an eight-tailed bandage; those resembling, it was thought, a crab's legs’ (Syd. Soc. Lex.). Also called cancer-bandage.
1753in Chambers Cycl. Supp.
2. Astron. (With capital initial.)
a. The Zodiacal constellation of the Crab, lying between Gemini and Leo.
b. The fourth of the twelve signs or divisions of the Zodiac (♋), beginning at the most northerly point of the ecliptic or summer solstitial point, which the sun enters on the 21st of June. The sign originally coincided with the constellation, but on account of the precession of the equinoxes, the first point of Cancer is now in the constellation Gemini. Tropic of Cancer: the northern Tropic, forming a tangent to the ecliptic at the first point of Cancer, about 23° 28′ from the equator.
c1391Chaucer Astrol. (1872) 9 In this heued of cancer is the grettest declinacioun northward of the sonne..this signe of cancre is cleped the tropik of Somer. c1400Destr. Troy 2344 In the season of somer, er the sun rose, As it come into canser. 1594Blundevil Exerc. vi. xiv. (ed. 7) 624 The Sunne being in the fourth degree of Cancer. 1606Shakes. Tr. & Cr. ii. iii. 206 And adde more Coles to Cancer, when he burnes With entertaining great Hiperion. 1727Thomson Summer 44 When..Cancer reddens with the solar blaze. 1833Macaulay War Success. Sp., Ess. (1854) I. 239/1 The American dependencies of the Castilian crown still extended far to the North of Cancer and far to the South of Capricorn. 1859Pictures of Heavens 32 Cancer..perhaps the Zodiacal sign was so called because the sun begins to return back..when it enters this sign, and its retrograde motion may be represented by that of a crab.
c. Astrol. A person born under the sign of Cancer. Also attrib. or as adj.
1894E. Kirk Influence of Zodiac upon Human Life xvii. 145 The Cancer men are far more constant than the Cancer women. 1924[see Pisces 1 b]. a1963L. MacNeice Astrol. (1964) iii. 77 Many astrologers would advise a Pisces type to marry a Cancer but not a Virgo. 1970L. Goodman Sun Signs 145 Cancer's heart is too soft not to be touched by someone's need. 1985London Portrait Mag. Apr. 196/2 It would seem to tie in with Charles's chart that from August Cancer feels more secure, more nurtured and loved.
3. a. Pathol. A malignant growth or tumour in different parts of the body, that tends to spread indefinitely and to reproduce itself, as also to return after removal; it eats away or corrodes the part in which it is situated, and generally ends in death.
The earlier name was canker, q.v.
1601Holland Pliny II. Gloss., Cancer is a swelling or sore comming of melancholy bloud, about which the veins appeare of a blacke or swert colour, spread in manner of a Creifish clees. 1671Salmon Syn. Med. i. xlviii. 114 καρκινος, Cancer is a hard round Tumour blew or blackish having pain and beating. 1747Hervey Medit. & Contempl. (1818) 254 On some a relentless cancer has fastened its envenomed teeth. 1768G. White Selborne xviii. (1853) 80 The wonderful method of curing cancers by means of toads. 1877Roberts Handbk. Med. I. (ed. 3) 274 Cancer is decidedly a hereditary disease.
b. fig. An evil figured as an eating sore.
1651Baxter Inf. Bapt. 274 This Cancer is a fretting and growing evil. a1711Ken Edmund Poet. Wks. 1721 II. 194 Sloth is a Cancer, eating up that Time Princes should cultivate for Things sublime. 1875Jowett Plato (ed. 2) II. 355 The incurable cancer of the soul.
†4. A plant: possibly cancer-wort (see 5).
1546Langley tr. Pol. Verg. De Invent. i. xvii. 31 b, Yf he be stynged with a spider, he healeth himself with eatinge Pylles or a certain herbe named Cancer. 1609Heywood Brit. Troye, Who taught the poore beast having poison tasted, To seek th' hearbe cancer, and by that to cure him?
5. Comb. (in sense 3), as cancer-cell, cancer-element, cancer-serum; cancer bush S. Afr. [ad. Afrikaans kankerbos] (see quot. 1895); cancer-root (see quots.); cancer stick jocular or colloq., a cigarette; cancer wort (see quots.).
1895A. Smith S. Afr. Materia Medica (ed. 3) xxi. 138 Sutherlandia frutescens, R. Br.—Dutch, *Cancer bush. This shrub has been brought forward recently as a remedy for cancer. 1949Cape Argus 9 July (Mag. Section) 1/3 This is where the..cancer bushes and chincherinchees for his rockeries are raised. 1966E. Palmer Plains of Camdeboo xvii. 277 The early settlers..used..the pretty little Sutherlandia humilis—the cancer bush—not only for cancer but for flu.
1876tr. Wagner's Gen. Pathol. 479 Cancer-juice consists of *cancer-cells and a usually scanty, fluid substance, the intercellular substance or cancer-serum.
1768G. White Selborne xviii. (1789) 53 This woman..having set up for a *cancer-doctress.
1714Phil. Trans. XXIX. 64 To this they add a Root call'd the *Cancer Root. 1884Miller Plant-n., Cancer Root, Conopholis (Orobanche) americana and Epiphegus virginiana. ― one-flowered, Aphyllon uniflorum.
1959J. Braine Vodi xxii. 242 There was a packet of cigarettes on the locker. She took one out and lit it. ‘First *cancer stick today,’ she said. 1967New Statesman 20 Jan. 77/2 To be able to..tempt fate by a debonair pull on a cancer stick is a way of asserting the individual's right to choose his own end.
1597Gerard Herbal Index (Britten & Holland) *Cancerwoort, that is Fluellen, 504. 1884Miller Plant-n., Cancer-wort, Linaria spuria and L. Elatine; also an old name for the genus Veronica.
▪ II. cancer, v.|ˈkænsə(r)|
[f. prec. n.]
trans. To eat into as a cancer; to eat (its way) slowly and incessantly like a cancer.
1840De Quincey Casuistry Rom. Meals Wks. III. 280 Other things advance per saltum—they do not silently cancer their way onwards. 1858― Autobiog. Sk., Wks. (1863) xiv. 93 The strulbrug of Swift.. was a wreck, a shell, that had been burned hollow and cancered by the fierce furnace of life.
Hence ˈcancered ppl. a., affected with cancer.
a1774Goldsmith Nat. Hist. (1776) VII. 102 The application of toads to a cancered breast. |