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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
rankle
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ His casual style of dress rankled his superiors.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Although such incidents rankled, the cutter crews' sense of humour soon surfaced to erase the bad memories.
▪ But Tasini was never paid extra for the electronic rights to his writing and this rankled him.
▪ Greg's jibe about the dress being like a shroud rankled.
▪ Suggestions of inferiority have long rankled in a city where image has been an obsession for more than a century.
▪ The implications of this remark rankled with us deeply.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Rankle

Rankle \Ran"kle\ (r[a^][ng]"k'l), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Rankled (-k'ld); p. pr. & vb. n. Rankling (-kl[i^]ng).] [From Rank, a.]

  1. 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.
    --Rowe.

    This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people.
    --Burke.

  2. 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.

Rankle

Rankle \Ran"kle\ (r[a^][ng]"k'l), v. t. To cause to fester; to make sore; to inflame. [R.]
--Beau. & Fl.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
rankle

c.1300, "to fester," from Old French rancler, earlier raoncler, draoncler "to suppurate, run," from draoncle "abscess, festering sore," from Medieval Latin dracunculus, literally "little dragon," diminutive of Latin draco "serpent, dragon" (see dragon). The notion is of an ulcer caused by a snake's bite. Meaning "cause to fester" is from c.1400. Related: Rankled; rankling.

Wiktionary
rankle

vb. 1 (context transitive intransitive English) To cause irritation or deep bitterness. 2 (context intransitive English) To fester.

WordNet
rankle

v. gnaw into; make resentful or angry; "The unjustice rankled her"; "his resentment festered" [syn: eat into, fret, grate]

Usage examples of "rankle".

Wounds were to be healed which required the assuasive hand of time, which were destined to rankle even in the bosoms of another generation, and the painful memory of which is keenly treasured even now.

Judge Prowse, whose intimate knowledge of Newfoundland entitles his opinion to special respect, thinks that even in recent years there lingered some rankling memory of the days when French Canadian raids terrified the colonists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The consulars also and senior members, from the hatred of tribunitian power still rankling in their bosoms, the desire of which they considered was much more keenly felt by the commons than that of the consular power, almost had rather that the decemvirs themselves should voluntarily resign their office at some future period, than that the people should rise once more into consequence through their unpopularity.

Now the atmosphere of rankling hatred, the stories of a past of which I had known nothing, of unredressed wrongs and grievances that had accumulated through the centuries, had gradually kindled an answering flame in me.

Gould was a retired bank manager, with a permanently soured expression and straight-backed, anal fussiness that rankled Andi before they were even introduced.

The pictures taken at Binh Khoi rankled me the mostI hated to see him laughing and smiling.

Caroline Fordyce considered him an excellent model for a villain rankled.

As the leech applies in remedy to the internal sore some outward irritation, which, by a gentler wound, draws away the venom of that which is more deadly, thus, in the rankling festers of the mind, our art is to divert to a milder sadness on the surface the pain that gnaweth at the core.

But the Colonel quoted Byron, Tennyson and other excellent authorities, falling back at last on the solid though irrevelant fact that he had loved Kate too well, and it was her own sterling worthiness of that devotion which barbed the arrow that rankled in his heart.

The celebrity bestowed upon Michaelis on his release two years ago by some emotional journalists in want of special copy had rankled ever since in his breast.

Maybe guerrillas, although misguided men and atheists But Heinz recollected something that rankled more.

The domestic aura, Caralie's sparkling eyes and luscious lips, even Kaycee's happier-than-usual chattering rankled.

Astarte, or Ashtoreth, as they called her, reigned in the First Temple of Jerusalem alongside Yahweh and, periodically, in place of him, a state of affairs that rankled the right-wing misogynists of the Yahwehistic extreme.

There have arisen new bickerings between this court & the Hague, and the papers which have passed shew the most bitter acrimony rankling at the heart of this ministry.

It rankled Breathard no end that the commish had had an early morning meet with Wolf - he'd checked the office sign-out logs, the commish not bothering to inform him - and had left him in the dark on this Moravia thing.