Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Going or moving backward, like a crab: in music, used of a canon the subject of which is repeated in the answer backward instead of forward.
Examples
“What I want to hear is the retrograde inversion in a 6-part crab canon cancrizans.”
“Ives wrote in 1932, One variation was the theme in canon, put in three keys together, B-flat-E-flat-A-flat, and backwards the cancrizans of Hindemith who was at Yale?”
“Haydn's "exercise" for the degree was the following "Canon cancrizans, a tre," set to the words, "Thy voice, O harmony, is divine.”
“- J.S. Bach - Musikalisches Opfer BWV 1079 - VII Canon a 2 cancrizans”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘cancrizans’.
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250 Cherry-Picked Words
Juicy words for the intermediate and advanced speller
consomme, miniaceous, nankeen, smaragdine, stramineous, vitellary, allemande, beguine, bransle, charabanc, margaritaceous, chaconne and 238 more...
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phrontistery - c
from phrontistery.info
caballine, cabas, cable, caboched, cabochon, caboose, cabotage, cabré, cabrie, cabriole, cabriolet, cacaesthesia and 1298 more...
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ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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Clearinghouse
For stuff to simply reside.
calcar, pinion, espadrille, antipodes, peregrine, cormorant, tanager, vireo, farrago, undervest, passerine, oscine and 881 more...
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Forthright's Words
aegrotat, almacantar, amphigory, barathrum, boustrophedon, cancrizans, carfax, colophon, delenda, diaglyph, enchiridion, episemon and 38 more...
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words I remember first encountering
fetlock, artefact, quandary, asyndeton, chiasmus, enjambement, vehemently, vituperative, decorum, sable, scansion, diapason and 75 more...
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MAD WICKED WORDS YO
MAN THESE WORDS SO TIGHT DAWG SO TIGHT
callipygian, atavistic, dysania, plenilune, catafalque, desultory, diabrotic, dolmen, malmsey, mithridate, esculent, comestible and 9 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for cancrizans.

avivamagnolia ~to go backwards
~in music, crab form or crab canon: a cancrizans canon Jan 17, 2009
sionnach A Gödel-Escher-Bach kind of conceit. Dec 17, 2007
sarra A canon (musical) which contains a reversal of its own theme. From Latin cancriz�?re, to walk backwards; see cancrine. Dec 16, 2007