Word.ws English Dictionary

rankles

rankles is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 rankles

What is rankles the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Rankles is the third-person singular simple present indicative of rankle.

Words near rankles in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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