gangrenize

Verb

gangrenize (third-person singular simple present gangrenizes, present participle gangrenizing, simple past and past participle gangrenized)

1. To cause or to develop gangrene.
   • Whoever knows what changes occur in an element of the body separated from the rest , and kept macerating at temperatures of F . 60° – 100° , can predict what changes the same element would undergo if gangrenized in connection with the body.1864, John Simon, Transactions of the Vermont Medical Society, page 30
   • And that resulted, as we know, in frightful stomatitis which gangrenized the gums, which disturbed, lay bare the teeth and often made them fall out, which sometimes extended to their base, to necrosis of parts of the maxillas, and which in all cases imposed on the unfortunate patients a long and...1979, Jean de Vigo, Le mal français, 1514, page 71
2. (figuratively) To corrupt or cause to degenerate.
   • Perhaps the worst imbecility of the Junkers was their policy towards gangrenized Russia .1932, Herbert Vivian, The Life of the Emperor Charles of Austria, page 149
   • A painting by Severini (of Scaramouche with a guitar and two masked pals) hangs near a cubist rendering of the Woolworth Building in New York, and a post-pre-Raphaelite landscape by a period-fancying Gloucestershire Hebrew, to point the gangrenizing of the time.1981, Thomas Kush, Wyndham Lewis's pictorial integer, page 106