Noun: canker
| Singular | canker |
| Plural | cankers |
Sample Sentences
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Slightly sunken brown cankers of variable size and shape affect stem parts primarily below the soil line. [1977, The Potato: Major Diseases and Nematodes, International Potato Center, page 46:]
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loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud[…] [1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 35”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:]
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the canker of destitution and violence.
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the cankers of envy and faction [c. 1690, Sir William Temple, Of Heroick Virtue:]
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There’s canker at the root, your seed
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Denies the blessing of the sun,
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The light essential to your need.
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Your hopes are murdered and undone. [1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC, page 4:]
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To put down Richard, that ſweet louely Roſe,
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And plant this thorne, this canker Bullingbrooke? [c. 1597 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The History of Henrie the Fourth; […], quarto edition, London: […] P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1598, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], signature [B.iv.], recto:]
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This Caſtoꝛ liueth by water and lande, he loueth to feede vpon Crabbes and Cankers of the Sea. [1562, Williyam Bulleyn [i.e., William Bullein], “The Booke of Simples”, in Bulleins Bulwarke of Defẽce againste All Sicknes, Sornes, and Woundes, That Dooe Daily Assaulte Mankinde, […], London: […] Ihon Kyngston, →OCLC, folio lxxx, verso:]
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It is this power of active motion which has obtained it a local name in the West of Cornwall, where, as crabs in general are termed "cankers," this species is distinguished by the name of "flying canker." [1856, The Zoologist, volumes 14-15, page 5616:]
Nouns inflected like canker
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English canker, cancre, from Old English cancer (“cancer; crab”), akin to Dutch kanker, Old High German chanchar. Ultimately from Latin cancer (“a cancer”). Doublet of cancer, a later borrowing from Latin, and chancre, which came through French. See: Middle English Nouns '
canker', Old English Nouns '
cancer', Dutch Nouns '
kanker', Latin Nouns '
cancer'.