Word.ws English Dictionary

rankled

rankled is the simple past and past participle of rankle.

Meaning of rankle

Verb

rankle (third-person singular simple present rankles, present participle rankling, simple past and past participle rankled)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To cause irritation, bitterness or acrimony.
    • My colleague's gratuitous criticism still rankles with me.
    Synonyms:
    embitter, irritate
  2. (intransitive) To fester.
    • a splinter rankles in the flesh

See all 3 meanings of rankle

Questions about rankled

What is rankled the simple past and past participle of?
Rankled is the simple past and past participle of rankle.

Words near rankled in the dictionary

  1. rankist
  2. rankists
  3. rankit
  4. rankits
  5. rankle
  6. rankled
  7. ranklement
  8. rankles
  9. rankless
  10. ranklessness
  11. rankleth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rankled (page history and authors); rankle (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: “rankled.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rankled. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.