cancel vs obviate

cancel

verb
  • To cease to provide financial or moral support to (someone deemed unacceptable). Compare cancel culture. 

  • To cross out something with lines etc. 

  • To offset or equalize something. 

  • To kill. 

  • To remove a common factor from both the numerator and denominator of a fraction, or from both sides of an equation. 

  • To invalidate or annul something. 

  • To stop production of a programme. 

  • To mark something (such as a used postage stamp) so that it can't be reused. 

noun
  • A cancellation (US); (nonstandard in some kinds of English). 

  • The page thus suppressed. 

  • A control message posted to Usenet that serves to cancel a previously posted message. 

  • The page that replaces it. 

  • The suppression on striking out of matter in type, or of a printed page or pages. 

obviate

verb
  • To avoid (a future problem or difficult situation). 

  • To anticipate and prevent or bypass (something which would otherwise have been necessary or required). 

noun
  • Synonym of obviative 

adj
  • Synonym of obviative 

How often have the words cancel and obviate occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )