Word.ws English Dictionary

rankling

rankling is the present participle and gerund 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

Noun

rankling (plural ranklings)

  1. A sensation that rankles.
    • I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women, / I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid […]1855, Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Forms of rankling

pluralranklings

Questions about rankling

What does rankling mean?
Rankling means a sensation that rankles.
What is rankling the present participle and gerund of?
Rankling is the present participle and gerund of rankle.
What part of speech is rankling?
Rankling is a noun.
What is the plural of rankling?
The plural of rankling is ranklings.

Words near rankling in the dictionary

  1. ranklement
  2. rankles
  3. rankless
  4. ranklessness
  5. rankleth
  6. rankling
  7. ranklingly
  8. ranklings
  9. rankly
  10. rankness
  11. ranknesses

Source and license

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