What does cancelling mean?
Cancelling is the act of calling off, annulling, or withdrawing something that has been planned, arranged, or agreed upon. As the present participle and gerund of the common verb cancel, it covers a wide range of everyday situations: cancelling a flight because of bad weather, cancelling a doctor's appointment, cancelling a streaming subscription, or cancelling a direct debit at the bank. It can also describe a more abstract process in which opposing forces or values negate one another, as in physics or mathematics, where positive and negative quantities may be said to be cancelling each other out. In postal usage, cancelling refers to marking a stamp so it cannot be reused. Spelling varies by region: British English doubles the final consonant to give cancelling, while American English prefers the single-l canceling. The word is neutral in tone, universally understood across the English-speaking world, and indispensable in modern life, where plans, bookings, and subscriptions are made and reversed constantly.
verb (present participle and gerund of 'cancel')The present participle and gerund form of the verb cancel, meaning to call off or annul a planned event, arrangement, or order, or to void something such as a subscription or debt.
- Calling off or abandoning a planned event, meeting, journey, or arrangement
- Annulling or terminating a service, subscription, order, contract, or account
- Voiding or negating an effect, value, or force, as when two factors cancel each other out (often expressed via the phrasal use 'cancelling out')
- Striking through printed text, especially on stamps or tickets, to mark it as used or invalid
"She spent the morning cancelling appointments after the storm warning was issued."
"After the lead singer fell ill, the band had no choice but to announce that they were cancelling the rest of the tour."
"He kept cancelling his gym membership every January, only to rejoin by spring."
Whether you write cancelling or canceling depends entirely on which side of the Atlantic you learned to spell on — both are correct, but mixing them in one document is not!
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of cancelling
Cancelling derives from the Latin cancellare, meaning to make like a lattice and hence to strike out writing with crossed lines — the same root that gives us the lattice-work word cancel itself. Latin cancellare comes from cancelli, meaning lattice or grating, which also produced the English words chancellor and chancery, titles tied to the screened enclosures of medieval courts. The verb passed into English from Latin, likely via French, in the late medieval period, and the practice of crossing out text with intersecting lines preserves the original image behind the word.
Related word forms
How cancelling is actually used
Cancelling is the gerund and present participle of cancel. In British English, the final 'l' is doubled before suffixes beginning with a vowel (cancelling, cancelled), while American English generally keeps a single 'l' (canceling, canceled) unless stress falls on the final syllable. The word is neutral in register and appears freely in formal notices, customer-service contexts, and everyday speech alike.
Easily confused with cancelling
Canceling is the American English spelling with a single 'l', while cancelling is the British English spelling with a doubled 'l'; they mean exactly the same thing.
Cancellation is the noun referring to the act or instance of cancelling, whereas cancelling is the verb form describing the action itself.