Talk:cancer

I think there should be a link to "carcinoma" on this page - a synonym or near synonym.

I'm sure that when I was a medical student (70s-80s) we were told that "cancer" applied only to tumours of ?endothelial origin. Sarcomas and blood neoplasias such as leukaemias and lymphomas were not "cancer" - although in more modern usage this distinction may seem pedantic and archaic. Penglish (talk) 12:19, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Cancer as adjective
Shouldn't there be an entry for adjective? For example, when we say "cancer cells", "cancer" is an adjective and not a noun! --Spiros71 (talk) 21:33, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * User:Spiros71: We can also say "brick house", "lightning storm" and "chicken soup". See attributive noun. We generally do not consider this usage deserving of a separate part of speech header. Also, how does "these cells are cancer" or "this house is brick" sound? Keφr 22:09, 12 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, but cancer as adjective will be translated differently in many languages, hence the need for a separate entry. --Spiros71 (talk) 18:55, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * But it's not an adjective, so creating an adjective sense would be dishonest. In many languages, tall is translated by a verb. That doesn't mean we should have a verb sense for tall, or that we we should have an entry for be tall. Also, just about any noun can be used attributively, so we could end up with hundred of thousands of adjective senses for attributive nouns. For that matter, even verbs can be used like attributive nouns in their participle and gerund forms, so the number of new adjective senses required would be astronomical. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:13, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean, how do you suggest then translations in other languages which are in fact adjectives, should be handled? For example, in Greek, "cancer" as in "cancer cells" would be an adjective "καρκινικός". Adding that as an extra meaning to the noun sense would be misleading I think.--Spiros71 (talk) 11:38, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
 * : If a translation doesn't fit, then I don't think it should be added. Words like καρκινικός should have an entry, but it's fine if they're not listed as a translation anywhere if there's no English word that can be directly translated as such. What about ? Greek Wiktionary (καρκινικός) lists "cancerous" as an English translation, and if that's accurate, then καρκινικός should be added as a translation of . καρκινικός also lists as a translation, which is of questionable value for the reasons discussed in this thread. Eishiya (talk) 02:39, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

RFV discussion: May–June 2018
Rfv-sense: "The quality of being cancerous."

I can't make sense out of how this would be used and can't find this definition in OneLook dictionaries. I'm not even sure how to find an unambiguous indication that a use of cancer is in this rather than another sense. ???"That nasty meme has cancer". ???"That growth has cancer." DCDuring (talk) 12:16, 11 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Even "that growth has cancer" could plausibly/probably be using the usual sense (meaning the same as "...has cancer in it"). Introduced in diff; looks like a misunderstanding. - -sche (discuss) 21:22, 11 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , can you give an example sentence to illustrate what you were thinking when you added this? That would greatly help in the search for supporting citations. Kiwima (talk) 01:09, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it's something like "this game is cancer" (= this game is very bad)- modern slang. DTLHS (talk) 01:22, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Is it an adjective? If it means "very bad", that is distinct new sense, which would eliminate the need for meeting the more rigorous of the grammatical tests for adjectivity. But the definition would need to be changed to something like "very bad". DCDuring (talk) 01:33, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think it's still intended as a noun (grammatically comparable to "this feeling is dejection"; compare "this post gave me cancer"). It's using an even-more-generalized sense of cancer than the one we currently have. - -sche (discuss) 19:22, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
 * ...and the reason I'm not adding such a sense for that usage that I'm not convinced it isn't just intended to be a (hyperbolic) reference to the disease, since one also sees "this post gave me AIDS". - -sche (discuss) 21:37, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 20:03, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Latin or Greek origin?
English section etymology states the Latin word comes from ancient Greek but Latin section etymology states it comes from proto-Italic and not Greek. Is this page contradicting itself?--Saledomo (talk) 14:07, 20 December 2021 (UTC)