Technology and the internet

Thirteenth on this list is cancellare, glossed as to delete, and the gloss is correct in a way that hides the trap. English owns the same verb. Behind both stands Latin cancellare, to strike a text out with crossed lines, from cancelli, the bars of a lattice: a clerk drew a grid over what no longer stood. English then spent the word on the abstract half of that gesture. To « cancel » is to call off something arranged — a train, a meeting, a subscription — and what disappears is an arrangement rather than any writing. For the writing English went elsewhere, to « delete », out of delere. Italian never made the division. Cancellare is to rub out, and it covers the pencil mark, the file, the message and the memory: ho cancellato tutto per sbaglio is about a folder, cancellare la lavagna is about a blackboard. For calling off a booking, Italian prefers disdire or annullare. So the reader who hears « I cancelled everything » in ho cancellato tutto has understood a lost afternoon where a lost folder was meant.