Word.ws English Dictionary

ranken

ranken verb: to make or become rank.

Verb

ranken (third-person singular simple present rankens, present participle rankening, simple past and past participle rankened)

  1. (ambitransitive, rare) To make or become rank
    • In a word, it is good for nothing but to despatch men out of the world that are burdensome, and to ranken churchyards.1868, John Mockett Cramp, Baptist History, page 299
    • His glance passed again over the patched-up rigs and spavined horses dejectedly standing in this rain-rankened muck.1993, Nelson C. Nye, Trigger Talk/the Wolf That Rode, page 202

Forms of ranken

third-person singular presentrankens
present participlerankening
past participlerankened
pastrankened

Origin of ranken

From rank + -en (verbal suffix).

Questions about ranken

What does ranken mean?
Ranken means to make or become rank.
What part of speech is ranken?
Ranken is a verb.
What is the past tense of ranken?
The past tense of ranken is rankened.

Words near ranken in the dictionary

  1. ranked ballots
  2. ranked choice
  3. ranked voting
  4. rankee
  5. rankees
  6. ranken
  7. rankened
  8. rankening
  9. rankens
  10. ranker
  11. rankers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ranken (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: “ranken.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ranken. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.