Definitions
gnaw into; make resentful or angry
Word origin
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”).
Used in a sentence
“My colleague's gratuitous criticism still rankles with me.”
“Liam hadn't meant for that last part to slip out. Allie might think it pretty pathetic that he'd remembered that comment from the first night they met, but it had rankled him then and, to some degree, it rankled him now.”
“What most rankles me about the term is how casually it is being applied to schools—temples of learning—and especially to children.”
Source: Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0
Used as a crossword answer2 curated clues
01“Keep irritating”6 letters
02“Irritate over time”6 letters
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