can

1. 1.

   preserve in a can or tin

   “tinned foods are not very tasty”

   Synonymstinput up

   Broaderpreserve

   cooking

2. 2.

   terminate the employment of; discharge from an office or position

   “The boss fired his secretary today”

   “The company terminated 25% of its workers”

   Synonymsdisplacefiregive noticedismissgive the axesend awaysackforce outgive the sackterminate

   Broaderremove

   Narrowerretirepension offclean outfurloughsqueeze outdismiss

Other forms of can

plural

cans·

past tense or participle

canned

present participle

canning

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about can

What does can mean?

can means "airtight sealed metal container for food or drink or paint etc.". That is the primary sense; the word has 8 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in can?

can has 1 syllable: can. In IPA it is /ˈkæn/.

What is another word for can?

Close synonyms include tin, tin can, canful, can buoy, buttocks. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is can a common word?

can is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with can?

2 words rhyme with can. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.