cancel out

1. 1.

   wipe out the effect of something

   “The new tax effectively cancels out my raise”

   “The `A' will cancel out the `C' on your record”

   Synonymswipe out

   Broaderextinguish

Questions about cancel out

What does cancel out mean?

cancel out means "wipe out the effect of something".

What is another word for cancel out?

Close synonyms include wipe out. 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 cancel out a common word?

cancel out is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.