Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Cancellous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Separated into spaces or divisions, as by cancelli.
  • In anatomy, same as in zoölogy, but especially said of the light spongy or porous texture of bone resulting from numerous thin osseous laminæ with intervening spaces large enough to be readily seen by the naked eye. Such texture occurs in the ends of long bones, as the humerus and femur, and in the interior of most short, fiat, or irregular bones. The spaces are chiefly vascular channels, filled with connective tissue, fat, etc., between plates or layers of more compact bone-tissue.
  • In botany, applied to leaves consisting entirely of veins, without connecting parenchyma, so that the whole leaf looks like a sheet of open network; in mosses, applied to cell-structure having such appearance.
  • Also cancellous.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective (Bot.) Consisting of a network of veins, without intermediate parenchyma, as the leaves of certain plants; latticelike.
  • adjective (Zoöl.) Having the surface coveres with raised lines, crossing at right angles.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective botany Consisting of a network of veins, without intermediate parenchyma; lattice-like.
  • adjective zoology Having the surface covered with raised lines, crossing at right angles.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective having a latticelike structure pierced with holes or windows
  • adjective having an open or latticed or porous structure

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin cancellātus, past participle of cancellāre, to make in a crisscross pattern; see cancel.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin cancellatus, past participle of cancellare.

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Examples

Comments

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  • "Scatter patterns in sand, adnates, cancellates, gaping

    whelk husks, a toy tractor-trailer, cracked

    and dinged, beside the spine of a plastic tree,

    the helmet-shaped shelter of a shadow cast

    by a not-quite-buried wedge of pottery . . ."

    "Hermit Crab" by Stephen Burt, p 28 of the August 5, 2013 issue of the New Yorker

    August 13, 2013