Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • A canon (musical) which contains a reversal of its own theme. From Latin cancriz�?re, to walk backwards; see cancrine.

    December 17, 2007

  • A Gödel-Escher-Bach kind of conceit.

    December 17, 2007

  • ~to go backwards

    ~in music, crab form or crab canon: a cancrizans canon

    January 17, 2009