_rankle_
Verb.
Pronunciation: ræŋk(ə)l.
Third-person
singular simple present: rankles.
Preterite
tense, preterite
participle: rankled; present
participle: rankling.
It is dated from
the beginning of 1300.
Etymology: from Old French rancler, raoncler (= to fester), variant of draoncler, from raoncle, rancle (= a festering sore), variant of draoncle, from
Medieval Latin dracunculus (= a sore or ulcer), in Latin, a little dragon,
diminutive of draco (= dragon).
Intransitively: 1. Pristine
acceptation, now obsolete: (the subject being a wounded or diseased part of an
animated body) to fester.
2. (The subject being a wound, a disease, a sickness, a
sore, etc.) to fester; to become, or be,
rank, festering or corrupt.
Antonym: to
heal.
Translation: enconarse, in Spanish; s’envenimer, in French; inciprignire, in Italian.
After implanting the sting could you take pleasure in watching how the
wound rankled and festered and
spread corroding poison through my flesh?
The American Whig Review
[…] how deep the iron had struck, and how the wound rankled beneath such a stroke as
that.
The Metropolitan, 53
3. (The subject being a thing) to cause a sore, a festering or inflamed effect.
Antonym: to
heal
[…] perhaps the barbed points of the cohetes rankled in his flesh, acting like spurs.
William. – R. Chambers… Chamber’s Journal, v. 27
Properly warned, she will take a knife, sever the flower from the pear
(there is no stem to speak of), pick it up by the tip of a petal, carry it home
in a paper or hand-kerchief, and dump it gently into water –happy if she does
not feel a dozen intolerable prickles here and there, and have to extract, with
help of magnifying-glass and tweezers, as many needle-like barbs rankling in her flesh.
Olive Miller… A Bird Lover in the West
4. Obsolete: (the subject
being a wounder) to inflict a festering
wound.
5. a. (The subject being a feeling as bad
as a wound) to continue, with an effect like that of a festering
wound.
The suggestion was horridly unpleasant, and it rankled in his mind so much that
instead of entering his own cottage when he reached it he flung his basket inside
the garden-gate and passed on, determined to go and see his old aunt and get
some supper there.
Thomas Hardy… Jude the Obscure
b. (The subject
being a fact, an event, an incorporeal thing, etc., as bad as a wound) to
continue to cause an unpleasant feeling.
The
phrase rankles in my memory all the same.
William Black… Macleod
of Dare
The thought of it no longer rankled, and that interest
could never be hers again.
William Howells… Dr. Breen's Practice
It was some time, before the unhappy man gained sufficient composure to
utter more than incoherent lamentations for the loss of his child; that child,
whose beauty and innocence had been so long his pride and only solace, and
whose apparently ungrateful and unprincipled desertion of him, had so long rankled in his bosom.
Hannah Jones… The Strangers of the Glen
b. (The subject
being a person or another animal) to be the subject of a feeling as
unpleasant as a festering wound.
6. (The
subject being a bad feeling) to alter into another worse by, or as
by, festering.
-) With
the prepositions to or into +
noun of the feeling.
A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which, a moment before, was on
both parts regarded with careless indifference, is continued by the desire of
conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity.
Samuel Johnson… The Adventurer and Idler
Transitively: 1. To
cause (a wound, a sore, etc.) to fester or rankle.
Antonym: to
heal.
Translation: enconar, in Spanish; envenimer, in French; inciprignire, in Italian.
[Richard] was aimed at by one Bertram de Gourdon, an archer from the
castle, and pierced in the shoulder with an arrow. The wound was not in itself
dangerous; but an unskilful surgeon endeavouring to disengage the arrow from
the flesh, so rankled the wound that it
mortified.
Oliver Goldsmith – Charles Coote… The History of
England
In itself, the wound was not dangerous; but the square pyramidal head of
the quarril rendered its extraction an operation of great skill and patience.
Unhappily, there was no regular surgeon in attendance, and the individual who
attempted to cut it out, so rankle the wound, that
mortification ensued.
George Hansard… The Book of Archery
2. Metaphor: to cause (a bad feeling) to worsen; to make it as if painful; anger (a
person).
Antonym: please.
Words derived
from the verb RANKLE: rankling,
ranklingly.
