cancel out

Idioms  

1. Neutralize the effect of, offset, render void. For example, Anne's kindness to her neighbor could not cancel out her irritability. The verb cancel was used in this way by itself from the late 1400s; out was added in the early 1900s.

---

Example Sentences

The standard advice for a central bank facing a supply shock is to look past it, concluding that the hit to growth and the boost to inflation roughly cancel out.

From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 18, 2026

Further, you can’t simply cancel out the harms of consumption by putting all those clothes you purchased in hauls—at secondhand stores or otherwise—in your local donation bin when you’re done with them.

From Slate • Jan. 26, 2026

It can also cancel out disturbances that affect all of the atoms in the same way.

From Science Daily • Jan. 26, 2026

If either of these ratios were to fall back below their lows of a couple of weeks ago, that would cancel out the sell signal.

From MarketWatch • Jan. 8, 2026

The good stuff seemed to cancel out the hating part, but he wasn’t sure because feelings were not math.

From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman

Related Words

• annihilate
• belie
• disallow
• disprove
• invalidate
• neutralize
• nullify
• rebut
• reverse
• undo
• vitiate
• void