Chancre
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 Skin lesion, sometimes associated with certain contagious diseases such as syphilis.
"The nurse stood up and went towards the door. At that point the caretaker said to me, "It's a chancre she's got." I didn't understand, so I looked at the nurse and saw that she had a bandage round her head just below the eyes. Where her nose should have been, the bandage was flat. Her face seemed to be nothing but a white bandage."
- 2 a small hard painless nodule at the site of entry of a pathogen (as syphilis) wordnet
Example
More examples"The nurse stood up and went towards the door. At that point the caretaker said to me, "It's a chancre she's got." I didn't understand, so I looked at the nurse and saw that she had a bandage round her head just below the eyes. Where her nose should have been, the bandage was flat. Her face seemed to be nothing but a white bandage."
Etymology
Borrowed from French chancre (“cancer”), from Latin cancer (“crab”). Cognate to canker and cancer.
Related phrases
More for "chancre"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.