cankered
Americanadjective
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morally corrupt.
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(of plants)
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destroyed or having portions destroyed by the feeding of a cankerworm.
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having a cankerous part; infected with a canker.
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Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of cankered
late Middle English word dating back to 1375–1425; see origin at canker, -ed 3
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He has suffered for it: his health debilitated by frequent hunger strikes, his knees cankered with sores from long sessions of prayer, according to prison officials.
From Time • Jul. 28, 2010
Hamlet paused before coming to his point “I wish to discover whether a surgeon, by cutting out the cankered spot, could restore the vital spirit to perfection.”
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
The still energetic men, and the women that have been cankered with the tedium vit�, and have the brains and brawn to work.
From Ancestors A Novel by Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn
The world taken 'en masse' is a monster, crammed with prejudices, packed with prepossessions, cankered with what it calls virtues, a Puritan, a prig.
From Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man by Wilde, Oscar
But it is more like a garden than the cankered cat-walk it once was.
From The New Gulliver and Other Stories by Pain, Barry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
