Rankle
//ˈɹæŋ.kəl// noun, verb
noun, verb ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A festering, embittering object or condition, either mental, or a physical sore or ulcer. rare
"To this the Prince appeared to acquiesce; but I saw it did not please, and left a rankle in his mind."
Verb
- 1 To cause irritation, bitterness or acrimony. intransitive, transitive
"My colleague's gratuitous criticism still rankles with me."
- 2 gnaw into; make resentful or angry wordnet
- 3 To fester. intransitive
"a splinter rankles in the flesh"
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"His bitter words still rankle in my mind."
Etymology
From Middle English ranklen, ranclen, from Old French rancler, räoncler, draoncler (“to ulcerate, to form a boil”), from Old French draoncle (“a boil”), from Latin dracunculus (“little serpent”), diminutive of Latin dracō (“serpent, dragon”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.