Plural of cancellus; latticed barriers, grills, or networks; in anatomy, the crosshatched trabecular structure of spongy bone.
From Latin cancelli, plural of cancellus, meaning 'lattices,' 'grills,' or 'network of crossing lines.' The term appears in medieval architecture and modern anatomy.
Medieval church screens called cancelli literally separated priests from laity, and today we use the same word for the lattice-like structure inside our bones—the same visual pattern across centuries.
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