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Rankle   Listen
verb
Rankle  v. i.  (past & past part. rankled; pres. part. rankling)  
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." "This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people."
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.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rankle" Quotes from Famous Books



... Father before she left, and told him a tissue of Lies concerning us,—how that Mary had wished him dead, and I had made away with his Books and Kitchen-stuff. I, being at Hackney at the Time, on a Visitt to Rosamond Woodcock, was not by to refute the infamous Charge, which had Time to rankle in Father's Mind before I returned; and Mary having lost his Opinion by previous Squabbles with Mother and the Maids, I came back only to find the House turned upside down. 'Twas under these misfortunate Circumstances ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... know that her cousin Johnny was harboring such bitter thoughts against her. She had a high temper herself; but anger did not rankle in her heart for days and days, as it did in Johnny's. She was not ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May

... Where is Honour, Innate and precept-strengthened, 'tis the rock 380 Of faith connubial: where it is not—where Light thoughts are lurking, or the vanities Of worldly pleasure rankle in the heart, Or sensual throbs convulse it, well I know 'Twere hopeless for humanity to dream Of honesty in such infected blood, Although 'twere wed to him it covets most: An incarnation of the poet's God In all his marble-chiselled beauty, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... withers of Voltaire's pale successors. No man among our contemporaries has been more hated than Monsieur Louis Veuillot. He has flagellated, kicked, cuffed, jeered, mocked, humiliated, exasperated, better than anybody else, the writers I most detest. He has given them wounds which will forever rankle. He has indelibly branded these miserable actors who play upon the theatre of their vices the comedy of their vanity. We together examined the pages where I had expressed my opinion ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... complaisance to Mrs. Danvers' wishes in receiving her against her judgment; but she was too good to send her away. She laughed, and accepted her as a penance for her sins, she said—as a thorn in the flesh—and she let the thorn rankle there. She remembered her honored Fisher, and the scene by the bed-side of poor Saunders. She looked upon the endurance of this plague as a fresh offering to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... above all, he stands as the representative of his age: a wit among the comic dramatists who were going out and the essayists who were coming in; a man of the world with Lady Mary and the gay parties on the Thames; a polemic, who dealt keen thrusts and who liked to see them rankle, and who yet writhed in agony when the riposte came; a Roman Catholic in faith and a latitudinarian in speech;—such was Pope as a type of that ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... will say, "You have ability; come into the light—only put that by; it keeps you obscure. And what purpose does it serve now? Be practical; come." And you may weaken and yield and enter the light for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour—a failure, miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final. You may stand your ground, refuse the bribe, uphold the flag, and be rated a fool and a failure, but they who rate you so will not understand ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... One time I was an hostler at [in] an inn, And in the night-time secretly would I steal To travellers' chambers, and there cut their throats. Once at Jerusalem, where the pilgrims kneel'd, I strowed powder on the marble stones, And therewithal their knees would rankle so, That I have laugh'd a-good to see the cripples Go limping home to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... things are possible," returned the missionary. "And you must not allow enmity to rankle in your own breast, Whitewing, because of me. Besides, it was probably one of Rushing River's braves, and not himself, who shot me. In any case they could not have known who ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... Cadiz; myriads upon myriads line the shore and cover the houses to catch a glimpse of the martial nun; cardinals and kings and popes hasten to embrace her; the thunders of popular welcome arise wherever she appears; but the nun finds no rest; terrific memories rankle in her bosom, and blast her repose; again she embarks for America; but then, how closed that career, so tragically tempestuous? The nun reached Vera Cruz; she took her seat in the boat to go ashore; no more is known; her fate is concealed in impenetrable mystery; 'the sea ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... of him, a man she so fought for, against us all? And now her eyes are opened, she is undeceived, she knows him all through and through, more, far more, than we do. She opened her mind to me once, and only once. It was not that alone; oh, no, no. There are things that rankle more than that, something he did before they were married, and made her help him to conceal. Something dishon—I can't say the ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... contributors to the Farmers' Weekly Museum, and to Dennie's Port Folio, wrote in the preface to his "Original Poems" (Philadelphia, 1806), "Although the war, which terminated in a separation of the two nations, inflicted wounds which, it is to be feared, still rankle, yet the more considerate of both countries have long desired (if I may be allowed a transatlantic simile) that the hatchet of animosity might be buried in the grave of oblivion" (page 6). A little further on he confesses his timidity, when, speaking of the political ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... suddenly found fleeting, And they whistled o'er the surface, smooth and black, And the ice, with an unwonted warmth of greeting, Slapt me suddenly and hard upon the back. I didn't mind your laughing, if the laughter Had left no sting of scorn to rankle after. Though I'd joyously have flung myself before you To adore you, Still to sit with all one's might upon the ice ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various

... been his mother, but a grey, trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had done to her in these four weeks and in ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... words like these, carelessly uttered, and forgotten with the breath that formed them, should rankle like arrows in a breast where reason was enthroned? But it was even so. The allusion to Richard Clyde, the revelation of Mr. Regulus' romantic attachment, even the playful remarks of Dr. Harlowe relative to his wife's jealousy, were gall and wormwood, ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... to rankle in Anne's stormy bosom, Marilla descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in soul. She was as angry with herself as with Anne, because, whenever she recalled Mrs. Rachel's dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with amusement and ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the clergy and the laity pillaged the treasury. Their return was not, however; stained by bloodshed, although the Calvinists were reviled in the open street. A few stabs from a dagger or shots from an arquebus might, however, have been better; such wounds heal while mocking words rankle in the memory. ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... worse, thou wondrous world! oh! doubly worse, Did heaven design thy lordly land to nurse The motley dregs of every distant clime, Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere, In full malignity to rankle here? ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... people suffer a covert danger to rankle in their midst until it gains strength to burst into an open enemy? Will they tamely submit while Hesden Le Moyne rallies the colored men to his standard and hands over Horsford to the enemy? Will they stand idly and supinely, and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... it from the bottom of my heart. "Now one thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... come very badly out of it. She had showed herself to be his superior on his own pet subject. She had been courteous while he had been rude, self-possessed when he had been angry. And then, above all, there was her presence, her monstrous intrusion to rankle in his mind. A woman doctor had been an abstract thing before, repugnant but distant. Now she was there in actual practice, with a brass plate up just like his own, competing for the same patients. Not ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... never yet had the luxury to dream:—'trahit sua quemque voluptas;' and let Quisquilius enjoy his hobby-horse, even to the riding of it to death! But let him not harbour malevolence against supposed injuries inflicted: let not foolish prejudices, or unmanly suspicions, rankle in his breast: authors and book-collectors are sometimes as enlightened as himself, and have cultivated pursuits equally honourable. Their profession, too, may sometimes be equally beneficial to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... not know. She ventured a guess or two, but there was no conviction in her tone. With two nominal arrests in five minutes chalked against him, and with his first rebellion against the Little Woman to rankle in his conscience and memory, she owned herself at ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower

... leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure, when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many, perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb, 'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good—but to ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... I left, to look out for such property as I left behind, and had retained my old house. I found him waiting for me, and with everything in good order. That is one good thing to be said about the natives. An imagined wrong or insult may rankle in their minds for months, until they have a chance to stab you in the back. They will lie to you at times with the most unblushing nerve, often when the truth would have served their ends so much better that it seems as if they must have been doing mendacious gymnastics simply ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme

... father; on the other side the trusting child looking up at her, and all the mother pleading in her heart against the frightful dogma of her revered husband. Do you suppose she left that poison to rankle in the tender soul of her darling? Would it have been moral parricide for a son of the great divine to have repudiated the doctrine which degraded his blameless infancy to the condition and below the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... old-fogyish. But it wasn't her old-fogyishness, per se, that irritated; it was the fact that her old-fogyishness had made her "call down" Missy—in front of the minister. Just as if Missy were a child. Fifteen is not a child, to itself. And it can rankle and burn, when a pair of admired dark eyes are included in the situation, just as ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... shadowing his man so faithfully that at any hour of the day or night he could have clapped the arresting hand upon his shoulder. Still he hesitated. Once, in his Secret Service days, he had arrested the wrong man, and the smart of the prosecution for false imprisonment would rankle as long as ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... smile an announcement which said, "I have triumph'd. The question your eyes would imply Comes too late, Alfred Vargrave!" And so he rode by, And rode on, and rode gayly, and rode out of sight, Leaving that look behind him to rankle and bite. ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... Rose. "'Is not that He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away?' Methinks that should rankle sore in Hezekiah's mind, and in the hearts of them that lovest him. Bishop Bonner is somewhat coarser and less subtle, yet 'tis the ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... dirty, freckled Dan Reese for her as Walter Blythe. She would not have blamed the angel and she did not blame Walter Blythe. But she wished that sturdy Jem or Jerry had been there and Dan's insult continued to rankle in ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... Edom is described in Malachi i. 1-5, and must therefore be relegated to a period about the middle of the fifth century. We are probably not far from the truth in dating Obadiah 1-14 about 500 B.C. The memory of Edom's cruelty would still rankle ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... long sigh and shook her head. "It won't do, Roddy. Can't you see you're giving way practically under a threat—because I'll go away if you don't? But think what it would mean if I did stay, on those terms. The thing would rankle always. And if anything did happen to one of the babies because the new nurse wasn't quite so good, you'd never forgive me—not ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... provoked or exasperated at a trifle, when the nerves are exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... considering what I really wanted, I not only waste my servant's time, which would supply my wants, and therefore injure myself in one sense, but I waste the strength which is her only means of subsistence, and I awaken that vexation of temper, which, although perhaps suppressed before me, will yet rankle in her bosom, and probably induce her to commit some injury on my property, which is an actual sin in her: thus my folly leads to her guilt, and the very least mischief that can accrue is her unhappiness; for who can be happy whose temper is perpetually ruffled ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... cause and root of all his ill, Inward corruption and infected sin, Not purg'd nor heald, behind remained still, And festring sore did rankle yet within, 220 Close creeping twixt the marrow and the skin. Which to extirpe, he laid him privily Downe in a darkesome lowly place farre in, Whereas he meant his corrosives to apply, And with streight diet ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... of passion, and the confession of premature passion, both rankle in the breast—and, probably, in the breast of ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... of venom, helplessly distilled, did not seem to rankle in Miss Vervain's mind. She walked now with her face turned from his, and she answered coldly, "We shall not be troubled. We don't care for ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... there was no need for saying anything. Conscience told him that it would be better to be perfectly straight with his wife. Instinct told him that though she would probably be sweet and sympathetic over it, yet it would rankle in her mind and poison her thoughts. And perhaps for once, Instinct may have been better than Conscience. Do not ask too many questions, you young wife! Do not be too free with your reminiscences, you young husband. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... little things—mere trifles," continued Thorpe, dogmatically, "but with men of my temper and make-up those are just the things that aggravate and rankle and hurt. Maybe it's foolish, but that's the kind of man I am. You ought to have had the intelligence to see that—and not let these stupid little things happen to annoy me. Why just think what you ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... live in one's mind, remain in one's mind, dwell in one's mind, haunt one's mind, impress one's mind, dwell in one's memory. sink in the mind; run in the head; not be able to get out of one's head; be deeply impressed with; rankle &c (revenge) 919. recur to the mind; flash on the mind, flash across the memory. [cause to remember] remind; suggest &c (inform ) 527; prompt; put in mind, keep in mind, bring to mind; fan the embers; call up, summon up, rip up; renew; infandum renovare dolorem [Lat.]; jog the memory, flap ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... to make of the hilt a cunning piece of workmanship for the reader to admire. For the public admires the handle, the delicate work of the brain, while the cruelty is not apparent; how should the public know that the steel of the epigram, tempered in the fire of revenge, has been plunged deftly, to rankle in the very quick of a victim's vanity, and is reeking from wounds innumerable which it has inflicted? It is a hideous joy, that grim, solitary pleasure, relished without witnesses; it is like a duel with an absent enemy, slain ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... snake, that twined in playful zeal, But yester morn, around his ankle, Now driven along the dust to steal, Steals up, and leaves its venom'd rankle ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... sufferings and losses will be forgiven or forgotten, battles will be remembered only as they recall the martial virtues of the combatants; but anything like chicane, anything like a trick, will always rankle. The Government are concerned in South Africa not only to do what is fair, but to do what South Africa will accept as fair. They are concerned not merely to choose a balance which will deal evenly ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... last. And yet, all this was permitted by an American people, who owed their remaining a nation to my husband! I have dwelt too long on this painful subject, but when I have been compelled from a pitiful income to make a boarding-house of my home, as I now am doing, think you that it does not rankle ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... tail eight times round his hard back, and, after he had bitten it in great rage, he said, 'This is one of the sinners of the thievish fire.' Therefore I, where thou seest, am lost, and going thus robed I rankle." When he had thus completed his speech the flame, sorrowing, departed, twisting ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... look ere it reaches her heart, To bid its wounds rankle anew, Oh! smile, or embalm with a tear the sad smart, And angels will smile ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent

... Hilbrook soon again. He consented to wait for Hilbrook to come to him, before trying to satisfy these scruples of conscience which he had hinted at; and he reasonably hoped that the painful points would cease to rankle with the lapse of time, if there should be a ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... provisions of various kinds for the suffering people of Lancashire, was destroyed on her return passage, and the ship that destroyed it may have been, and I believe was, built by these patriotic shipbuilders of Birkenhead. These are things that must rankle in the breast of a country which is subjected to such losses and indignities. Even to-day I see in the newspapers that a vessel that went out from this country has destroyed ten or eleven ships between the ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... labour to him?" murmured Billy, whose tact on occasions of universal sorrow was sometimes faulty. "'Tis the rankle of bein' in every blackguard's mouth that'll cut Will ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... there to join you. Then remember you Southerners sprang to arms so gallantly in that skirmish with Spain that you made a fine impression. It was discovered that you had been brave enough not to allow defeat to rankle in your hearts, a really good quality. A more opportune time for you Southern people to take a stand would be hard to ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... youth! I do forgive him all; E'en now remorse must rankle in his breast, And no cool comfort cometh at his call, To set the tumult of his soul at rest: God's pity on his ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... observed, the Old Man, when he did start to take a person's measure, didn't leave out much. The address was not long, but it covered a great deal of ground. The section of it which chiefly rankled in Charteris's mind, and which had continued to rankle ever since, was that in which the use of the word 'buffoon' had occurred. Everybody who has a gift of humour and (very naturally) enjoys exercising it, hates to be called a buffoon. It was Charteris's one weak spot. Every other abusive ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse

... fire at this, he would say his friend knew all the particulars, and he would ask him, and so leave that to rankle till next visit. And having planted his germ of hope, he would grow it, and water it, by visits and correspondence, till he could throw off the mask, and say he was convinced Staines was alive: and from that, by ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... only pain me As a lingering disease, But, finding no redress, ferment and rage; Nor less than wounds immedicable Rankle."] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... plateaus north of Craonne continued to rankle in the mind of the German command, and repeated efforts were made to recover these precious positions. In the night of July 25, 1917, a ferocious attack was made on the French lines on a front of about two miles from La Bovelle Farm to a point east of Hurtebise. In the face of a murderous fire from ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the sore rankle through life. 'T is not from whence you came that counts; 't is what you are. I'd take your shame of birth, if I could rid myself of mine. Fortune, position, and opportunity I've wasted, while you have ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... characteristic of the unfathomable stupid sex. Once a week, for example, when his room was 'done out,' there was invariably a skirmish between them, because Edwin really did hate anybody to 'meddle among his things.' The derangement of even a brush on the dressing-table would rankle in his mind. Also he was very 'crotchety about his meals,' and on the subject of fresh air. Unless he was sitting in a perceptible draught, he thought he was being poisoned by nitrogen: but when he could see ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... disaffected subject. At a Philosophy Act, in the University of Cambridge, in the royal presence, the queen preferred and rewarded his opponent for the slighter and more attractive elegances in which the learned Cartwright was deficient. He felt the wound rankle in his ambitious spirit. He began, as Sir George Paul, in his "Life of Archbishop Whitgift," expresses it, "to kick against her Ecclesiastical Government." He expatriated himself several years, and returned fierce with the republican spirit he had caught among the Calvinists at Geneva, which ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... exceptional, for I was suffering from two sore places. One started from my shoulder and went down my back, where there must have been the mark of the cane; the other was a mental sore, caused by the word pauper, which seemed to rankle and sting more than the ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... the rights of mothers.—My dear," he said suddenly, abandoning his pretense of ignorance, "why don't you go to them, take her by surprise? Things are so much better said face to face, and before any hurt has had time to rankle. Why don't you ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... not believe I shall ever get over it," Brinnaria declared. "So many things rankle in my thoughts, the small things even more than what is more important. I grind my teeth over the mere legal consequences of his having been a gladiator. He will forfeit half the properties he inherited and he can never hold any ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... this hangman drew a heavy sum yearly from him; thus making him only a mine of wealth to himself; this, no doubt, would rankle in the other's heart, to think he should be so beset, and hold ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... great was the interest in the mysterious title. It was an old dodge, but a good one. Nothing appeared on the advertisements but the mere title. No word as to what "The Crimson Cord" was. Perkins merely announced the words and left them to rankle in the reader's mind, and as a natural consequence each new advertisement served to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... of a forgiving disposition, and let bygones be bygones. It is the only plan at schools, for girls are generally so frank in the nature of their remarks that if you begin to treasure up the disagreeable things said to you, and let them rankle, you will probably find yourself without a chum in the world. Though the fashion may be for plain speaking, it is often a matter of mood, and the mate who genuinely believes you a "blighter" one day, will claim you as a "mascot" with equal persuasion on the ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... homely that he couldn't sleep nights, his face ached so. Mr. Editor, I am that melancholy individual. Whoever perpetrated the joke—for joke it was no doubt intended to be—knew not how much truth he was uttering, or how bitterly the idle squib would rankle in the heart of one suffering man. Many and many a night have I in my childhood laid awake thinking of my homeliness, and as the moonlight has streamed in at the window and fell upon the handsome and placid features ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... to herself; yet that the admiration had been sufficient to keep him on at Merriston, while the devotion took for granted the right to all sorts of marital neglects, was the fact that rankled. It did more than rankle; it burned with all the other burnings. Althea had, at all events, been dragged from her mood of introspection. She had lost the sense of nonentity. She was conscious of a passionate, protesting self that cried out for justice. Who was Gerald, after all, to take things so ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... Deeply in their bosoms rankle wrongs and insults we have given, Blood alone can wash it, Kripa, such the cruel ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... Uncle Jake went on, examining Woodward and speaking more calmly when he found him breathing regularly. "Woe unto you, and shame upon you, Sister Bonner, to do this deed of onjestifiable homicide, ez I may say. Let flesh an' min' rankle, but ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... turned back into the house, not a whit discomfited, and with not so much as a contrasting sigh in her bosom or a rankle in her heart. On the contrary, a droll twinkle played among the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes. They could not hurt her, these merry girls, meaning nothing but the moment's fun, nor cheat her of her quiet share of ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... condescension—received with a smiling and curtsying civility—should have been unacknowledged by any reciprocal courtesy was an affront that could hardly be wiped out with blood. Indeed, it could never be atoned for. The wound was poisoned, and would rankle and fester to the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... have followed them, guessing that they had some good reason for this sudden departure. But Higgs refused to come, and Orme, in whom his foolish taunt seemed still to rankle, only shrugged his shoulders and ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... young man's soul found expression only in a hardening of the jaw and a clenching of the mighty fists. For, in the heart of him, he knew that in the future, no matter what the measure of the world might be, always, deep within him would rankle the bitter disappointment—the realization that this old man had gone to his grave believing that his son was a ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... Unpleasantness of that kind is apt to rankle long. But I wasn't going to give up my rights. Nobody but a coward does that. They talked of going to law and trying the will, but they wouldn't have got much by that. And then they abused me for two years. When they had done and got sick of it, I told them they should have it all back again ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... shaft to rankle, and by-and-by entered with a small velvet bag, from the neck of which he shook a small cascade of ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... own thought barbs it. [1] It is our pride that makes another's criticism rankle, our self-will that makes another's deed offensive, our egotism that feels hurt by another's self-assertion. Well may we feel wounded by our own faults; but we can hardly afford [5] to be miserable ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy

... the great Anglo-Saxon nation "whose race and language are now overrunning the world from one end of it to the other." [Arnold.] and whatever differences of form of government may exist between us and them; whatever reminiscences of the days when, though brethren, we strove together, may rankle in the minds of us, the defeated party; we should cherish the bonds of common nationality that still exist between us. We should remember, as the Athenians remembered of the Spartans at a season of jealousy and temptation, that our race is one, being of the ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... fled to the United States and made it a common plotting-ground. They were described in the Congressional debate on this subject as "men endeavoring to spread sedition and discord; who had assisted in laying other countries prostrate; whose hands are reeking with blood and whose hearts rankle with hatred toward us. Have we not the power to shake off ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... the beast, though not without a terrible struggle, in which they both fell over the rocks, but the bear was underneath, and Grettir was able to stab it to the heart. More than ever then on account of this did ill-will against Grettir rankle in Biorn's breast. He sailed west to England, as master of Thorkel's ship; when he returned he met Grettir at a place called Drontheim-firth. The two took up their old quarrel again, fought on the strand, and ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... your duty to consider the consequences," Lady Loring interposed. "You don't know how such things sometimes rankle in a man's mind. He may be perfectly willing to do you justice—and yet, there may be moments when he would doubt if you had told him the whole truth. I speak with the experience of a married woman. Don't place yourself in that position toward your husband, if you wish ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins

... exhausted of resources, and filled with malcontents and mourners, was left to recover slowly from the hurts and losses of foreign and intestine strife. 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. But the civil authority takes the place of the military, and with the disappearance of the invader, the warrior lays aside his sword,—satisfied if he ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... mother would surely have killed her. But afterward, when the girl returned to die in the old home, all was forgiven, and only the hatred of her foreign husband, whose cruelty had driven her back to Sicily, remained to rankle in ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... banqueting-hall turned inside out. I hear Mrs. Trenor wants to build out a new ball-room, and that divergence from Gus on that point keeps her at Bellomont. The dimensions of the Brys' ball-room must rankle: you may be sure she knows 'em as well as if she'd been there last night with a yard-measure. Who said she was in town, by the way? That Farish boy? She isn't, I know; Mrs. Stepney was right; the house is dark, you see: I suppose Gus lives ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... Tories had treated Marlborough and Walpole was more than retaliated. Harley and Prior were thrown into prison; Bolingbroke and Ormond were compelled to take refuge in a foreign land. The wounds inflicted in this desperate conflict continued to rankle for many years. It was long before the members of either party could discuss the question of the peace of Utrecht with calmness and impartiality. That the Whig ministers had sold us to the Dutch; that the Tory ministers had sold us to the French; that the war had been carried on only ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... he fell to ground, And turned his eyes toward heaven; nor spake he aught. Nor ate, nor slept, till in his daily round The golden sun had broken thrice, and sought His rest anew; nor ever ceased his wound To rankle, till it marred his sober thought. At length, impelled by phrensy, the fourth day, He from his limbs ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... sleep," grumbled the prince, "till I have humbled that woman. And you? Have you no rankle in your heart? Have you no desire to witness ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... not of the most pleasant and agreeable nature possible? How do these ideas get about? I yield to nobody in my respect for our manager. I may have had occasion from time to time to correct him in some trifling matter, but surely he is not the man to let such a thing rankle? No! I prefer to think that Comrade Bickersdyke regards me as his friend and well-wisher, and will lend a courteous ear to any proposal I see fit to make. I hope shortly to be able to prove this to you. I will discuss this little affair of the cheque with him at our ease at the club, ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... protection to all that were struggling on and on over that vast expanse of unbroken and treeless plain; can you wonder then that the unspeakable crimes and mistakes of the Government of those days still rankle in the breast of every living man and woman that in any way participated in the settlement of the West? If you do, look on the painting of the terrible annihilation of the gallant Custer and his five companies of the Seventh U. S. Cavalry with the old chief, Sitting ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young

... vices. The learning of the Egyptian schools she had mastered; there were none of the then modern accomplishments of which she had not made herself mistress; wealth and regal honors were hers; and yet what a sad picture she presents! Evil passions were allowed to rankle in her breast unchecked, till she became one of the vilest creatures, in a country become the vilest and basest of nations. The powers of mind with which she was endowed, used for the benefit of her country, might have ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... from all others, and says to herself and to the world, with what heart she may, that she has no need of help. But does that end the pain? Does it make her strong to say it? May not the slight implied in being overlooked rankle in her heart till it is changed and hardened? I am afraid the many single women we see and hear of, who live to themselves, giving no sympathy and seeking none, proves it past all denying. My dear, folk may say what they like about woman's sphere and woman's ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... intimacy with President Krueger, that he desired, as it were, to open an entirely new account between the two governments. He, a new High Commissioner with no South African past, with no errors to retrieve, no failures to rankle, could afford to bury the diplomatic hatchet. There was nothing to prevent him from approaching the discussion of any questions that might arise in a spirit of perfect friendliness, or from believing that the President would be inspired, on his side, by ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... convinced, of course, but at bottom the two things were so related that it would be surprising if she did not get a few shafts home. He would not show the wounds then, but they would be there; they would rankle; there would be some humiliation for him, too. A curious light crept into her eyes at the thought; she was surer of being able to reduce him than of exalting herself, and it is good, when circumstances prevent one from mounting, to drag a superior ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... malicious satisfaction her ill-mannered remark to Lionel Tarrant. Let him think of her as he would; at all events he could no longer imagine her overawed by his social prestige. The probability was that she had hurt him in a sensitive spot; it might be hoped that the wound would rankle for a long time. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... frowned regretfully. "I cannot blame him if he will not speak to me," she said to Sigurd Haraldsson. "The nature of a high-born man is such that a blow is like poison in his blood. It must rankle and fester and break out before he can be healed. I do not think he could have been more lordlike in his father's castle than he was yesterday. Hereafter I shall treat him as honorably as I treat you, or any ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... government expected from it any beneficial results. But other stipulations which are explicit, the performance of which was not to rest on the recommendation of the government, especially that respecting the payment of debts, were also neglected. These causes of mutual complaint being permitted to rankle for some time in the bosoms of both nations, produced a considerable degree of irritation. The British merchants had large credits in America. Those engaged in the colonial trade had been nearly ruined by the rupture ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... the first scent of danger would turn aside from the pursuit of hate! I staked my life on thine, and the stake is lost; but what care I? My hate shall follow thee; wither thy bones with its curse; poison every joy; blight every hope; rankle in thy life blood! Bid thee seek health, and bite the dust for anguish because it flies thee! And for me. Ha, ha! Men may think to judge me—torture, triumph, slay! Well, let them." And with a movement so sudden and so desperate, that to avert ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... it and retraced it (Peradventure with a pen corroded Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked, deg. deg.37 Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 40 Let the wretch go festering through Florence)— Dante, who loved well because he hated, Hated wickedness that hinders loving, Dante, standing, studying his angel,— In there broke the folk of his Inferno. deg. deg.45 Says he—"Certain people of importance" (Such he gave his daily ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... approbation. Every course of action in hostility, however that hostility may be just or merited, is not justifiable or excusable. It is the duty of those who claim to rule over others not to provoke them beyond the necessity of the case, nor to leave stings in their minds which must long rankle even when the appearance of tranquillity is restored. We therefore assure your Majesty that it is with shame and sorrow we have seen several acts of hostility which could have no other tendency than incurably to alienate the minds of your American subjects. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... any legitimate cause to complain when its neighbours exercise their unquestionable right to make whatever fiscal arrangements they consider conducive to their own interests. But the real and ostensible causes of war are not always identical. When once irritation begins to rankle, and rival interests clash to an excessive degree, the guns are apt to go off by themselves, and an adroit diplomacy may confidently be trusted to discover some plausible pretext for ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... retribution. It is of proof against conciliation, love, and confidence; against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all tenderness, all soft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable as the bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers rankle there, as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand of Pride itself, on weaker pride, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... butchering of innocent heretics, no manner of present disregard for the facts and apology can refute and redeem. The religious and civil wars, the massacre of the Albigenses and other sects, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, are still alive in the memories of historians and still rankle. The Crusades were a bloody blot in the none too peaceful times of the Middle Ages. Christianity hurled itself at Mohammedanism in expedition after expedition for nearly three centuries. Millions of men perished in battle, ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... the most dreadful things to one another without any one being a penny the worse. They do not understand one another's language. But if they speak a common tongue, the words which pass when the most ephemeral squabble arises stick and rankle. ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay

... might resolve to behave with magnanimity beneath his disappointment, the disappointment must rankle all the same. It was certainly the case that, while he professed friendship towards Mr. Lincoln personally, he was honestly unable to appreciate him as a president. Mr. Chase's ideal of a statesman had outlines of imposing ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... the railing religion, 'tis I that must take you a peg lower. I am sure you look for more work, you shall have wood enough to cleave, make your tongue the wedge, and your head the beetle. I'll make such a splinter run into your wits, as shall make them rankle till you become fools. Nay, if you shoot books like fools' bolts, I'll be so bold as to make your judgments quiver with my thunderbolts. If you mean to gather clouds in the Commonwealth, to threaten tempests, for your flakes of snow, we'll pay you with stones of hail; if ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... met him she had teased him about it, asking who it was he took after, and such-like questions; and Tony had replied with an abruptness which was so unusual in him that she had at first felt amused, until it began to rankle. Then she resented it, and when they met again, she was equally abrupt to him as he had been to her, and had, moreover, given a great deal of attention to what Dickson, who was present, said and did, while ignoring, as far as she could, the very ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... pretty well aware that a very heavy sentence was hanging over his head. He cared little for it; nothing that Saint Werner's or its authorities could do, would wound him half so deeply as what he was already suffering, or cause the iron to rankle more painfully in his soul. He felt as a man who ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar

... enough to understand he must conceal from George and the alcalde, and he contrived to do so pretty successfully; but the effort only caused them to gall and rankle the more intolerably, and when, at the termination of his interview with them, he quitted their presence with a certain scarcely veiled hint of insolence in his manner, he was in the throes of a perfect frenzy of anger and humiliation; in the precise ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... excitement at the hands of a liveried waiter. But we must leave the rest, which it would take a column or two to describe, especially as to our mind, a gaming-house furnishes an epitome of all the bad passions that rankle in the human breast. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on comparing notes with her daughter, Mrs. Lapham found that a barb had been left to rankle in her mind also. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... to make it plain that the Legion's attack was solely against the municipal head of Chicago, but some of the men of Illinois let the incident rankle. How it came out (and it was ended happily) will develop. Meantime the attention of the caucus was diverted from the Chicago incident by the manifestation of that desire which is in every true American's heart, namely to be a booster for his own home ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat

... such or similar freaks, larrups and pains and worries the horse. But these little asperities are the occasional landmarks that give point and piquancy to the even tenor of their loving career. Neither would, for a moment, think of allowing such incidents to rankle in his bosom. Both would repudiate with scorn the idea that they were a whit less useful, or in any degree less attached, to each other on account of such ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... joyful with the Judgment-Day ever before us?" said Aubrey; "how can we be joyful" (and here a dark shade crossed his countenance, and his lip trembled with emotion) "while the deadly passions of this world plead and rankle at the heart? Oh, none but they who have known the full blessedness of a commune with Heaven can dream of the whole anguish and agony of the conscience, when it feels itself sullied by the mire and crushed by the load of earth!" Aubrey ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in her days that poverty kept from her to the end, and the cloak was merely a luxury. She would soon have let it slip by as something unattainable had not Hendry encouraged it to rankle in her mind. I cannot say when he first determined that Jess should have a cloak, come the money as it liked, for he was too ashamed of his weakness to admit his project to me. I remember, however, his ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie

... his mother, who, however, directly the Duke's back is turned, gives him an antidote which restores him to health. In the last act Lucrezia takes comprehensive vengeance upon the friends of Gennaro, whose taunts still rankle in her bosom, by poisoning all the wine at a supper party. Unfortunately Gennaro happens to be present, and as this time he refuses to take an antidote, even though Lucrezia reveals herself as his mother, he expires ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... character to learn to do his work well, did he ever regard the work itself as anything but unsuitable, and almost discreditable. Indeed it may be doubted whether the iron of that time did not unduly rankle and fester as it entered into his soul, and whether the scar caused by the wound was altogether quite honourable. He seems to have felt, in connection with his early employment in a warehouse, a sense of shame such as would be more fittingly associated with ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials

... entirely sure that it ought never to be done. Mortification is a condition as unwholesome as it is uncomfortable. When the wound is inflicted by the hand of a parent, it is all the more certain to rankle and do harm. Let a child see that his mother is so anxious that he should have the approbation and good-will of her friends that she will not call their attention to his faults; and that, while she never, under any circumstances, allows ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... home, but it weighed heavily on my hands. We made up the vests, but the otherwise pleasant labor of my needle was embittered by the reflection of how great a wrong had been done to us. The sting of this imposition continued to rankle in my heart so long as we were the bondwomen of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... misery is endured by those who have never got the victory over their own ill-temper! To feel wretched and exasperated by little annoyances which good-humoured people get over with a shrug or a smile; to have things rankle in my mind like a splinter in the flesh, which glide lightly off yours, and leave no mark; to be unable to bear a joke, knowing that one is doubly laughed at because one can't; to have this deadly sore at heart—"I cannot forgive; I cannot forget," there is no pleasure ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... religion is sure to be exhibited in places where its professors are asleep or dead. In communities where real religion flourishes, where its power is felt, and its votaries are consistent and decided; whatever hatred may rankle in the breasts of opposers, they are not apt to indulge in contemptuous derision. But where formality and worldliness prevail, and no conspicuous standard of Christian character is visible—the hearts of sinners will be ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin

... Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for, When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked, Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, Let the wretch go festering through Florence)— Dante, who loved well because he hated, Hated wickedness that hinders loving, Dante standing, studying his angel,— In there broke the folk of his Inferno. ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... For deeds undone Rankle, and snarl, and hunger for their due Till there seems naught so despicable as you In all ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... The girl on the bed was almost white, but her sister fairly brown. Probably they had different fathers. They told me that they had seen Baillon on the streets, had fallen in love with him, and though they had never spoken to him, wanted to comfort him now that he was sick. Jealousy did not rankle in their hearts, apparently. That absence often shocked non-Polynesians. Brothers shared wives, and sisters shared ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... for. He slinks obediently away; he is only a poor labourer with his living to get, and he cannot afford to offend the man who stands between him and the lord and the lord's tenant. And he is inarticulate; but the insolence and injustice rankle in his heart, for he is not altogether a helot in soul; and the result is that the sedition-mongers, the Socialists, the furious denouncers of all landlords, who are now quartering the country, and whose vans I meet in the remotest villages, are listened to, and their words—wild and whirling ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... time being he was at a loose end in London when all his friends were out of town, and with no new passion on to entertain him. Pierrette, were she willing, would fill in the gap pleasantly; they had not parted the best of friends, but he had forgotten just enough for that memory not to rankle. He sat down on the chair beside her and took one of her ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson



Words linked to "Rankle" :   grate, rile, get at, bother, eat into, devil, rag, chafe, get to, nark, nettle



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