RANKLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Rankle

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/rˈæŋkəl/ Listen

verb

Rankle v. t. To cause to fester; to make sore; to inflame. (R.)

Rankle v. i. (past & past part. rankled; pres. part. rankling)

To become, or be, rank; to grow rank or strong; to be inflamed; to fester; used literally and figuratively. "A malady that burns and rankles inward." "This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people."

To produce a festering or inflamed effect; to cause a sore; used literally and figuratively; as, a splinter rankles in the flesh; the words rankled in his bosom.

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Etymology of 'Rankle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Rankle" Quotes from Famous Books

... that Pietro's injunction had robbed him of a chance like that was enough to rankle in any man's guts and make him work up something pretty close to insanity. I marked it down in my mental files for the investigation I was supposed to make, but let it go ...

— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey

... he fell to ground, And turned his eyes toward heaven; nor spake he aught. Nor ate, nor slept, till in his daily round The golden sun had broken thrice, and sought His rest anew; nor ever ceased his wound To rankle, till it marred his sober thought. At length, impelled by phrensy, the fourth day, He from his limbs tore plate ...

— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... natures might have answered back her scorn; a lower one might have complained; and still another would have left her in the woods. Barton said nothing, but, with a cold, stony face, walked on by her side. If, in his desperation, he wanted this killing thrust, which must ever rankle and never heal, to enable him to overcome and subdue his great passion, he had got it. That little hand, that emphasized her words with a gesture of superb disdain, would never have to repeat the blow. It raised about her a barrier that he ...

— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... roam? Or worse, thou wondrous world! oh! doubly worse, Did heaven design thy lordly land to nurse The motley dregs of every distant clime, Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere, In full malignity to rankle here? ...

— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... among the comic dramatists who were going out and the essayists who were coming in; a man of the world with Lady Mary and the gay parties on the Thames; a polemic, who dealt keen thrusts and who liked to see them rankle, and who yet writhed in agony when the riposte came; a Roman Catholic in faith and a latitudinarian in speech;—such was Pope as a type of that world in ...

— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

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