Meanings
- uncountableThe state or quality of being cancerous.
Starting in 1999, he began to mutate particular genes in human cells in culture and then to “interrogate” them for their cancerousness.
2009, Catherine Brady, Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres2 more examples
If, on the other hand, a tumor consist chiefly of fibre or fibrillating blastema, the presumption of its cancerousness diminishes; we have, however, seen a growth in the liver, which had all the aspect of a scirrhous formation, and probably was so, which yet consisted solely of fibre-forming solid blastema.
1854, Charles Handfield Jones, A Manual of pathological anatomyOnly one line of mouse cells will perform this trick— a line called NIH 3T3 that has been bred in the laboratory for so many generations that it has long since forgotten what normality is, and is within a whisker of cancerousness even without the intervention of extraneous oncogenes.
1983 June 9, New Scientist, volume 98, number 1361, page 691
Origin
Cite this entry
cancerousness. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cancerousness
“cancerousness.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cancerousness. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “cancerousness,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/cancerousness.
Source: cancerousness on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.