cancellous
adjective
cancellous is an adjective meaning “Having low density and strength but high surface area, of the kind that fills the inner cavity of long bones” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-A-N-C-E-L-L-O-U-S, and it appears about once in every 23 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does cancellous mean?
adjective
- 1
Having low density and strength but high surface area, of the kind that fills the inner cavity of long bones.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is cancellous?
Cancellous appears about once in every 23 million words in written English, the 145,125th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Cancellous in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense low-density (of bone):
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | spongieux |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does cancellous come from?
From Latin cancellus (“lattice”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).