Word.ws English Dictionary

carbuncles

carbuncles is the plural of carbuncle.

Meaning of carbuncle

Noun

carbuncle (plural carbuncles)

  1. (archaic) A deep-red or fiery colored garnet or other dark red precious stone, especially when cut cabochon.
    • With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus […]1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, act II, scene 2, line 401
  2. A charge or bearing supposed to represent the precious stone, with eight sceptres or staves radiating from a common centre; an escarbuncle.
  3. An abscess larger than a boil, usually with one or more openings draining pus onto the skin. It is usually caused by staphylococcal infection.
  4. An unpopular or ugly building; an eyesore.

Questions about carbuncles

What is carbuncles the plural of?
Carbuncles is the plural of carbuncle.

Words near carbuncles in the dictionary

  1. carbubarb
  2. carbuilder
  3. carbuilders
  4. carbuncle
  5. carbuncled
  6. carbuncles
  7. carbuncular
  8. carbuncularly
  9. carbunculation
  10. carbunculations
  11. carbunculosis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carbuncles (page history and authors); carbuncle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “carbuncles.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carbuncles. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.