An ulceration (especially of the lips or living of the mouth)

Usage examples of canker.

England mortally cankered with social discontent were not grounded in a surprising familiarity with backstairs morale.

If Bradford-on-Avon really was the secret heart of the world, then Blackacre was the hidden canker in that heart.

He does not need to try perilous experiments with his own soul in order to make sure that lust defiles, that avarice hardens, that frivolity empties, that selfishness cankers the heart.

Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit, Whose chillness struck a canker to its root.

Below it the Canker flowed through the city, its barges and pleasure boats little grubs of dirty light on the blackness.

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.

Across the Canker, the Ribs jutted over the roofs of Bonetown like a clutch of vast tusks curling hundreds of feet into the air.

Gilbert sat his horse with ill-disguised bad temper, Gautier was tense and anxious, and Duke Roland of Aldeni shifted uncomfortably, trying to ease the canker in his belly.

Perhaps he has a canker in his soul that eats away at his peace of mind.

She had suffered from canker, indigestion, and diarrhoea for a year previous to her delivery.

Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security.

The disgrace of medicine has been that colossal system of self-deception, in obedience to which mines have been emptied of their cankering minerals, the vegetable kingdom robbed of all its noxious growths, the entrails of animals taxed for their impurities, the poison-bags of reptiles drained of their venom, and all the inconceivable abominations thus obtained thrust down the throats of human beings suffering from some fault of organization, nourishment, or vital stimulation.

His unfailing courage and good sense won fights that the incompetency or cankering jealousy of commanders had lost.

She could not quite make up her mind to touch the feverish bills with the cankering coppers in them, and left them airing themselves on the table.