The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cankered \Can"kered\, a.
Affected with canker; as, a cankered mouth.
Affected mentally or morally as with canker; sore, envenomed; malignant; fretful; ill-natured. ``A cankered grandam's will.''
--Shak.
Canker \Can"ker\ (k[a^][ng]"k[~e]r), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Cankered (-k[~e]rd); p. pr. & vb. n. Cankering.]
-
To affect as a canker; to eat away; to corrode; to consume.
No lapse of moons can canker Love.
--Tennyson. -
To infect or pollute; to corrupt.
--Addison.A tithe purloined cankers the whole estate.
--Herbert.
Wiktionary
vb. (en-past of: canker)
Usage examples of "cankered".
England mortally cankered with social discontent were not grounded in a surprising familiarity with backstairs morale.
Life is full of numbness and of balk, Of haltingness and baffled short-coming, Of promise unfulfilled, of everything That is puffed vanity and empty talk: Its very bud hangs cankered on the stalk, Its very song-bird trails a broken wing, Its very Spring is not indeed like Spring, But sighs like Autumn round an aimless walk.
As it would have cankered his soul to feel that he was being beaten out of a half-dozen rations by the superior cunning of the Yankees, he adopted a plan which he must have learned at some period of his life when he was a hog or sheep drover.
For some things said in his hearing were distinctly not pretty, and made one wonder if Prince Victor's deep-rooted confidence in an England mortally cankered with social discontent were not grounded in a surprising familiarity with backstairs morale.