cancel out

phrasal verb

canceled out or cancelled out; canceling out or cancelling out; cancels out

: to reduce the effect of (something) : to be equal to (something) in force or importance but have an opposite effect

The costs cancel out the benefits.

Examples of cancel out in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Maine is a blue state with one Republican district, and so that action would cancel out what Nebraska is attempting to do. —Aron Solomon, Newsweek, 9 July 2024

According to FlightAware data, an additional 125 have been canceled out of Houston's William P. Hobby Airport, or about 60% of its outbound flights. —NBC News, 9 July 2024

However, the latest results from Asda and D&G suggest that the benefits of an extra day off are canceled out if employers try to make their employees work the same number of hours in fewer days. —Byryan Hogg, Fortune Europe, 8 July 2024

What if the universe’s vacuum energy is somehow perfectly canceled out and the cosmological constant is zero? —Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 1 Feb. 2021