Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Canker   Listen
verb
Canker  v. i.  
1.
To waste away, grow rusty, or be oxidized, as a mineral. (Obs.) "Silvering will sully and canker more than gliding."
2.
To be or become diseased, or as if diseased, with canker; to grow corrupt; to become venomous. "Deceit and cankered malice." "As with age his body uglier grows, So his mind cankers."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Canker" Quotes from Famous Books



... lee of Mittie May. He squatted upon the capsized keeler, automatically balancing himself as it wabbled under him on its one projecting handle, and, with his eyes fixed on nothing, gave himself over unreservedly to a consuming canker. For all that unhappiness calked his ears as with pledgets of cotton wool, there presently percolated to his aloof understanding the consciousness that somebody was speaking on the other side of the high board fence which marked the dividing line between Judge Priest's place and the Enders' ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... world is renewed by water. The submerged creatures first feel the touch of spring, and many an equivocal career, beginning in the ponds and brooks, learns later to ignore this obscure beginning, and hops or flutters in the dusty daylight. Early in March, before the first male canker-moth appears on the elm-tree, the whirlwig beetles have begun to play round the broken edges of the ice, and the caddis-worms to crawl beneath it; and soon come the water-skater (Gerris) and the water-boatman (Notonecta). ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... a great English family, and had been brought up in healthy splendour, saved from the canker of too much luxury by the aristocratic love of sport which is a tradition in such English families as hers. As a girl she had been what a certain sporting earl described as "a leggy beauty." Even then she had shown a decided ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens

... The canker of civilisation had got to him even in Bogota, and he could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man. Of course, if he did that, he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all. But—Sooner or ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... Now thou art gone and never must return! Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods, and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes, mourn. The willows and the hazel copses green Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays:— As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... westlin jingle. [west-country] While frosty winds blaw in the drift, Ben to the chimla lug, [In, chimney-corner] I grudge a wee the great-folk's gift, That live sae bien an' snug; [comfortable] I tent less, and want less [value] Their roomy fire-side; But hanker and canker To see ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... all, they can't all be alike! There's all sorts of Christians: some stands fer sunshine, some fer shade; some fer beauty, some fer use; some up high, some down low. There's jes one thing all the flowers has to unite in fightin' ag'inst—that's the canker-worm, Hate. If it once gits in a plant, no matter how good an' strong that plant may be, it eats right down ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... wives' tradition that it keeps away moths. Statice, from the Greek verb to stop, hence an astringent, was the generic name formerly applied to the plants, with whose roots these same old women believed they cured canker sores. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... of January, when the earth was covered with snow, and the bleak, cold winds of winter blew over the city, John Lane informed Harry, on his arrival, that Julia was very sick with the scarlet fever and canker rash, and it was ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... private life is why true hospitality is disappearing. The chance guest is no longer welcome to the family table; we are ashamed of our daily routine, or we have an idea that our fare is not worthy of being shared. Whatever it is, unconscious as it often is, it is a canker in the family life of to-day. It leads to selfishness, to a laxness in home manners very demoralizing. It is doubtless one of the great factors in the distinct deterioration ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... others have not known!" she exclaimed excitedly. "To be lifted above the others, when so young; to have one child only; then after so brief a period of happiness, to be smitten with barrenness, and this lingering malady ever gnawing like a canker at the roots of life! Who has suffered like me in the house? You only, Isarte, among the dead. I will go to you, for my grief is more than I can bear; and it may be that I shall find comfort even in ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... this year's German offensive was the creation in the heart of an efficient and gallant army of this canker of disaffection by propaganda that has been as energetic and as dangerous to our cause as any of the enemy's operations in the field. In every Allied country it has been active; among the English it is at work corrupting labor, preying on the nerves of the overstrained worker, and whispering ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... courage, strength, or wit, But folly, sloth, and damned idleness, Thou hast procur'd a greater enemy Than he that darted mountains at thy head, Shaking the burden mighty Atlas bears, Whereat thou trembling hidd'st thee in the air, Cloth'd with a pitchy cloud for being seen.— [200] And now, ye canker'd curs of Asia, That will not see the strength of Tamburlaine, Although it shine as brightly as the sun, Now you shall [201] feel the strength of Tamburlaine, And, by the state of his supremacy, Approve [202] the difference 'twixt ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... shall meet In combat face to face, Then only would Arminius greet The renegade's embrace. The canker of Rome's guilt shall be Upon his dying name; And as he lived in slavery, So ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... not a bite," the old man protested. "To eat now would canker a memory. I took sacrament over at the Major's. Now, I'm going to lean back here and I may talk or I may drop off to sleep, and in either event just let me go. But if I doze off don't wake me, not even when you get ready to leave. Just pull the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... on a cross of stone, And on their lifted faces, wan as death, I read this simple message of their faith: "The trail of flame is ashen, And pleasure's lees are gray, And gray the fruit of passion Whose ripeness is decay; The stress of life is rancor, A madness born to slay; They only miss its canker Who live with God ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... wrath of the Graevenitz. Was she not a tyrant? and tyrants had strange ways of hanging on to power after actual favour was gone past. And was she not a witch? it was not reassuring to incur a witch's curse. Nay, but she was a fallen favourite, the vile amputated canker of a terrible epoch, harmless now the blister of her evil glory was pricked, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... his breast.] 'tis the canker here that hath withered up my trunk;—but are we secure ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton

... shilling, tester, and penny he looks upon, from this day forth for evermore, be a blight to his eyes, and a canker to his heart! But I can't wish him a worse canker than what he has there already. Yes, he has a canker at heart! Is not he eaten up with envy? as all who look at him may read in that evil eye. Bad luck to the hour when it fixed on ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... no word passed upon the subject, saw the solitary canker at the Senator's heart—his wife's dead form in the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... year to the northern seminaries, for the instruction of our own sons, then we must have there five hundred of our sons, imbibing opinions and principles in discord with those of their own country. This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy. We are now certainly furnishing recruits to their school. If it be asked what are we to do, or said we cannot give the last lift to the University without stopping our primary ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone: The worm, the canker, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... there is no occasion to inquire into their origin or use; and he who sets out to philosophise upon them, or make the separation Mr. Burke talks of in this spirit and with this previous determination, will be very likely to mistake a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious kernel of truth, as was indeed the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... "Fine fellow, but unhappy. Canker somewhere, I should say. Here we are, and if General Jackson don't treat my army ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... treated in the same way as those on the house plants. Some familiar out-door insects which interfere with leaf work are the common potato bug, the green cabbage worm, the rose slug, the elm tree leaf beetle, the canker worm, the tomato worm. These insects and many others eat the leaves (Fig. 67). They chew and swallow their food and are called chewing insects. All insects which chew the leaves of plants can be destroyed by putting poison on their food. The common poisons ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... thought of his father. She longed to speak to him about his father's death, but as yet she did not dare. If once she could persuade him that that had not been his fault, she could, she thought, really help him. That was the secret canker at his heart and she could not ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... Thou that art like a Canker to the State Thou liv'st and breath'st in, eating with debate Through every honest bosome, forcing still The Veins of any that may serve thy Will, Thou that hast offer'd with a sinful hand To seize upon this Virgin that doth stand Yet ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... CANKER.—A small, shallow, yellow ulcer, appearing on the inside of the lips or beneath the tongue during some disorder of the digestion. It is very tender when touched and renders chewing or talking somewhat painful. Treatment consists of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various

... said: "You have had the canker of disease in you practically from your birth"—the actual word he ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... mysteries of each other's hearts, that needed not to be dragged to open day for inspection. In a pure friendship, faith is the highest element: with that there is supreme content; without it, distrust gnaws like a canker-worm. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... abject hollowness of that conventional code which masquerades in our midst as a system of morals. If he had continued to "live single" as we hypocritically phrase it, and so helped by one unit to spread the festering social canker of prostitution, on which as basis, like some mediaeval castle on its foul dungeon vaults, the entire superstructure of our outwardly decent modern society is reared, his father no doubt would have shrugged his shoulders and blinked his cold eyes, and commended the wise young man ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen

... now passed over the castle, hard to endure by every one who dwelt within its walls. Disease lurked in the family like canker in a flower. Since the dark hour when the dying son had been carried into his father's presence, the baron had never left his room. His small measure of remaining strength had been broken; grief consumed ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... about their business. God sees that the way to destroy that man is to let him get on. He does not want money in order to roll the old chariot along. God sees that prosperity would eat his soul like a canker, and so He won't let him get on. The Spirit of God never leads the soul to a selfish prayer. No; it leads the soul to weep because men keep not His law, to cry more about His interests than its own. It is willing for its ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... Sir Charles Napier, and other instances of military incapacity no less monstrous. Enough, however, has been told to more than justify the very mild summing-up of Mr. Russell, that the "war had exposed the weakness of our military organization in the grave emergencies of a winter campaign, and the canker of a long peace was unmistakably manifested in our desolated camps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... position. But no one will blame the same student for living in concubinage with a grisette. Why cannot the same means of existence which allow concubinage suffice for marriage? With this question I only touch on a problem to which we shall return, at the same time pointing out the canker which corrupts our ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel

... the guest of Moroello Malaspina, what time he was yet finishing the "Inferno." There is a little old neglected garden, full to south, enclosed upon a rampart which commands the Borgo, where we found frail canker-roses and yellow amaryllis. Here, perhaps, he may have sat with ladies—for this was the Marchesa's pleasance; or may have watched through a short summer's night, until he saw that tremolar della marina, portending dawn, which afterwards ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... Israel was enjoying the dangerous fruits of peace. Extravagance was common, and drunkenness, no less among the women than the men, iv. 1. The grossest immorality is associated even with public worship, ii. 7, and religion is being eaten away by the canker of commercialism, viii. 5. The poor are driven to the wall, and justice is set at defiance by those appointed to administer it, ii. 6, v. 7. Such was the society, brilliant without and corrupt within, into which Amos hurled his startling message that ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen

... want? To free the earth, to free mankind, to sweep the whole two-legged, chattering tribe out of existence. Man—the man of to-day—is wise. He has come to his senses. He is ripe for liberty. But the past eats away his soul like a canker. It imprisons him within the iron circle of things already accomplished, within the iron circle of facts. I want to demolish the facts—that's what I want to do: demolish all facts! To sweep away all the accumulated rubbish—literature, art, God. They have perverted mankind. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancient and rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blight and perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreproved and cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basest barbarity—the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does it survive, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... hoppers, bud worms and, now my worst enemy, a borer which I believe is a cherry tree borer. I have placed a section of a tree on the table which was attacked by this insect. The question has been asked if it were not a blight canker which killed this tree. When I noticed the tree in distress the leaves were drooping and the bark was intact and smooth, with a wet spot the size of a pin point about three feet above the ground. A stab wound revealed the bark loose and full of holes which extended ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... untimely blight fall on thy garland of love, no thorns be found with its glowing blossoms, no canker-worm of jealousy feed ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... return from work, would she look with a shudder into the faces of those poor wretches who flaunted by fearing yet hoping to see her lost child. But the name of Nora never passed her lips. No one who knew Mrs. Flanagan imagined of this canker at her heart; that page of her life was folded down, and closed to prying eyes; it was only when alone with God that on bended knees she prayed Him to bring the ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer

... soul to do thee service, will sooner fetch meat from a hungry Lion, than come to rescue thee; thou hast death about thee: h'as undone thine honour, poyson'd thy vertue, and of a lovely rose, left thee a canker. ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... another man that would like to be honest, but with the whole place impregnated with bribery he couldn't stand the pressure. But after this is all over he'll go home to his wife and his neighbors with the canker of this thing at his heart until he dies. I tell you, Jack, I'm for stopping it ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... formed between us. I, for my part, had learned from the manner in which she bore this attack, that she was a firm, patient woman (patient under physical pain, though sometimes perhaps excitable under long mental canker); and she, from the good-will with which I succoured her, discovered that she could influence my sympathies (such as they were). She sent for me the next day; for five or six successive days she claimed my company. Closer acquaintance, while it developed both faults and eccentricities, opened, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... was in many respects as fit a man as could have been selected for the task. His powers of physical endurance and the vigour of his intellect had already been tested in war; he possessed the resolution and the foresight of a true general. But the canker of the age was supposed to have infected Bestia and neutralised his splendid qualities.[928] The proof that he allowed greed to dominate his public conduct is indeed lacking; but he would have departed widely from the spirit of his time if he had allowed no thought of private ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... Sacraments, yet perversely insisted that they were Christian men and women, with a clearer insight into Gospel mysteries than Bishops and Cardinals or the Holy Father himself. Here was heresy rampant, and immortal souls, all astray, beguiled by evil men and deceivers, "whose word doth eat as doth a canker." Dominic "saw that there was no man, and marvelled that ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... atmosphere of the Court. Rich herself, with a rich husband who was cried up as one of the ablest men of the royalist party, and, as a friend of the King, certain to be made Minister, she belonged to the aristocracy, and shared its magnificence. In the midst of this triumph she was attacked by a moral canker. There are feelings which women guess in spite of the care men take to bury them. On the first return of the King, Comte Ferraud had begun to regret his marriage. Colonel Chabert's widow had not been the means of allying ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... Horticulture' March 13, 1866 page 194.) some seedlings valuable from their roots running near the surface. One of these seedlings was remarkable from its extremely dwarfed size, "forming itself into a bush only a few inches in height." Many varieties are particularly liable to canker in certain soils. But perhaps the strangest constitutional peculiarity is that the Winter Majetin is not attacked by the mealy bug or coccus; Lindley (10/93. 'Transact. Hort. Soc.' volume 4 page 68. For Knight's case see volume 6 page 547. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... murdered victim was a pedler too, and a clamoring bell the voice of unappeasable remorse in the murderer's ear. As a strict churchgoer the squire had no use for players or for play actors, and so was spared that added canker to his conscience. It was bad enough as ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... Christian? Take it patiently. God maketh the poor as well as the rich. Envy not the rich. Riches are often seen to be a canker-worm at the root of a good man's comfort, a snare in his life, an iron pillar at the back of his pride. A gar prayed to be fed with food convenient for him, and you may pray for the same, and what God gives you in answer to your prayer you will ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... E. Lee. He was not a soldier by education, but by instinct. A graduate of Harvard College and the stroke oar of his class, he was well prepared for military life, and the third of his line to bear arms for the United States. But no war ensued; the canker of a long peace ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various

... joy rounded and complete? Was there no secret alloy of unhappiness in it? Alas, there was. There was a canker gnawing at his heart; the noblest inspiration of his soul eluded his endeavor—viz: he could not make of the turnip a climbing vine. Months went by; the bloom forsook his cheek, the fire faded out of his eye; sighings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... hospitality of even the humblest preserves something of courtesy and ease, which tells of breed. I remember those clear evenings when, after the peaceful navigation of the day, I used to stop and draw up my dahabiya to the bank of the river. (I speak now of out-of-the-way places—free as yet from the canker of the tourist element—such as I habitually chose.) It was in the twilight at the hour when the stars began to shine out from the golden-green sky. As soon as I put foot upon the shore, and my arrival was signalled by the barking of the watchdogs, the chief of the nearest hamlet always came to ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... proved the most destructive canker of the Roman State. It was this social evil, more than political misrule, which undermined the empire. Slavery proved at Rome a monstrous curse, destroying all manliness of character, creating contempt of honest labor, making men timorous yet cruel, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... black-billed makes a tour through the orchard and garden, regaling himself upon the canker-worms. At this time he is one of the tamest of birds, and will allow you to approach within a few yards of him. I have even come within a few feet of one without seeming to excite his fear or suspicion. He is quite ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... has a slender, long-drawn-out appearance on account of the great length of tail. It is seldom seen about farms or near human habitations until the June canker-worm appears, when it makes frequent visits to the orchard. It loves hairy worms, and has eaten so many of them that its ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... above us. We agreed that his song came to us gaily and most freely, and all heard it so well that we paused as often amidst our berry-eating as he, while he refrained from singing just long enough to knock a luscious green canker worm in the head and devour it. It was the warbling vireo we heard. What a lesson is his mingling melody with work uncomplainingly and helping to keep the woods green and beautiful by his constant industry, co-partner ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... deliberate vandalism which ignores tradition and in the search after originality achieves only the eccentric. But in such vandalism there is none of the simplicity and spontaneity out of which great art springs: theory is still the canker in its core, and insincerity destroys the advantages of a merely ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... was the town, Because, like Herod, it had ruthlessly Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down The canker-worms upon the passers-by, Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown, Who shook them off with just a little cry They were the terror of each favorite walk, The endless theme ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Assembly considering how the errours of Independency and Separation (have in our Neighbour Kingdome of England) spread as a Gangraen, and do daily eat as a Canker; In so much that exceeding many Errours. Heresies, Schismes, and Blaspemies, have issued therefrom, and sheltered thereby; And how possible it is, for the same evils to invade, and overspread this Kirk and Kingdome, (lying within the same Island) by the spreading of their erronious Books, Pamphlets, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... hearts, for abundance there is not, but of the uppermost thing in their hearts their mouths must speak, even though the subjects be of the delicate nature that would naturally be hidden. Such mental constitutions are at least healthful. Concealed trouble never preys upon them like the canker in the bud. Everything comes to the ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... Pastor of Einsiedeln sees at first only the splendour that hangs around the name of his early comrade, the hero of his hopes. And Paracelsus for a while would forbear with tender ruth to shatter his friend's illusion, would veil, if that were possible, the canker which has eaten into his own heart. But in the tumult of old glad memories and present griefs, it ceases to be possible; from amid the crew of foolish praisers he must find one friend having the fidelity of genuine insight; he must confess his failure, and once ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... breath will oft disclose A canker in hope's perfect rose, For the false fever heat of strife To nurse, and nourish ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey

... immediate strength, while nourishing a hardly disguised contempt for his wit, as well as that of his cousins collectively. A secret hater of them all, and clear-minded in estimating them. A touch of Mephistophelian there is in the pleasure which he seems to find in the contemplation of the canker-spot in Wotan's nature, drawing from the god over and over again, as if the admission refreshed him, that he has no intention of dealing ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... the woods and desert caves, With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel-copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... an exception to the usual course of such lapses. With him, the canker showed itself "in the morn and dew of youth," when the effect of such "blastments" is, for every reason, most fatal,—and, in addition to the real misfortune of being an unbeliever at any age, he exhibited the rare and melancholy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... fragrance, graceful form, Carefully shrouded in that tiny cell; Till time and circumstance, and sun and shower, Expand the embryo blossom—and it bursts Its narrow cerements, lifts its blushing head, Rejoicing in the light and dew of heaven. But if the canker-worm lies coil'd around The heart o' the bud, the summer sun and dew Visit in vain the sear'd and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... of all Passions, in Perfection; ENVY, the most beloved Darling of Hell; the greatest Abhorrence of Heaven; ENVY, the Crime Mankind should be the most ashamed of, having the least to say in Excuse for it; the Canker of the Soul, most uneasy to the Possessor; a Passion not to be gratify'd, not possible of Pleasure; the peculiar one would imagine of infernal Beings, and much of their Punishment. ENVY, is ever levell'd at Merit, and superior Excellence; and the most deserving are, for being ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous

... continue so to re-form as persuasion flowed back upon Jenny's egotism, until it crystallised hard and became unchallengeable; but at any rate for this instant Jenny had had a glimmer of insight into that tamer discontent and rebelliousness that encroached like a canker upon Emmy's originally sweet nature. The shock of impact with unpleasant conviction made Jenny hasten to dissemble her real belief in Emmy's born inferiority. Her note was changed from one of complaint ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... had contributed to continue it. However, I recovered my health; but a neglected cold, and continual inquietude during the last two months, have reduced me to a state of weakness I never before experienced. Those who did not know that the canker-worm was at work at the core cautioned me about suckling my child too long. God preserve this poor child, and render her ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... honour and distinction, even to fame itself, had lain plainly open before him—and now everything was so different. The sun which he had thought was only rising was already setting. He knew now that the fruit which looked so sweet and luscious had the canker-worm feeding on the core; that the flesh which seemed so healthy was really tainted and leprous; and that, worse than all, the brightest and sweetest promise of his life, a promise infinitely sweeter and dearer than ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... humor of it was steeling him against the canker of Joan's untimely disappearance. "I don't look much like a Greek," he said to himself; "but the 'Alexandre' sounds well as an omen. I'm not so sorry now. This business ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... the Luke Gospelers represented right Methodism. But they fairly exemplified a sorry side of it; those little offshoots of which dozens have separated from the parent tree; and they exhibited most abundantly in themselves that canker-worm of Pharisaism which gnaws at the root of all Nonconformity. This offense, combined with such intolerance and profound ignorance as was to be found amid the Luke Gospelers, produced a community merely sad or comic to consider according to ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... Thro' the shackle-canker'd dust, Thro' the gyv'd soul, foul and dark Force they, changeless Gods and just! Up the bright ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... liable at any time to be called away from his husbandry to fight against the savage Iroquois or the aggressive British. Long after these combative days had passed away the military tenure remained, with its laws of serfdom, a canker at the roots of property; and thinking men dreaded to touch a matter so inwound with the very foundations of the social fabric in Lower Canada. But in 1854 and 1859 legislative acts were passed which have finally abolished the obnoxious tenure; each ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... intense, unhealthy working of his mind. False opinions falsely held and intolerantly maintained were the debauchery that sharpened the lines of his face, and converted his voice into a bark. Peace, health, and growth early became impossible to him, for there was a canker in the heart of the man. His once not dishonorable desire of the Presidency became at last an infuriate lust after it, which his natural sincerity compelled him to reveal even while wrathfully denying it. He considered that he had been defrauded of the prize, and he had ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... improvement and increase has come a widening of the distance betwixt his possessions and his desires. In other words, the shadows of contrast in social conditions in our country are hourly deepening, and it is at such times that the canker of discontent eats closest. It will serve no purpose for us to spend time in condemning this spirit, and making light of it, because it is a natural result and a political fact that can only be remedied by a removal of the immediate cause. It is not possible or desirable ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... of the Higher Thought contains no "negative propagandism." It is everywhere ranged on the side of the Affirmative, and its great object is to extirpate the canker which gnaws at the root of every life that endeavours to centre itself upon the Negative. Its purpose is constructive and not destructive. But we often find people labouring under a very erroneous impression as to the nature and scope of the movement, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... apprenticeship in order to become able to read, understand, and enjoy what Chaucer himself wrote. But if this apprenticeship be too hard, then some sort of makeshift must be accepted, or antiquity must remain the "canker-worm" even of a great national poet, as Spenser said it had already in his day proved to ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... perhaps, we need not seek[kd] For causes young or old: the canker-worm Will feed upon the fairest, freshest cheek, As well as further drain the withered form: Care, like a housekeeper, brings every week His bills in, and however we may storm, They must be paid: though six days smoothly run, The seventh will bring ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... indigence, and distress, to the vile practices of a villain, who, I fear, hath betrayed us both. What have not I suffered from the insults and vicious designs of that wretch, whom you cherished in your bosom! Yet to these I owe this near approach to that goal of peace, where the canker-worm of sorrow will expire. Beware of that artful traitor; and, oh! endeavour to overcome that levity of disposition, which, if indulged, will not only stain your reputation, but also debauch the good qualities of your heart. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... far as gallantry goes, and lives with a beautiful and sentimental Italian lady, who is as much attached to him as may be. I trust greatly to his intercourse with you, for his creed to become as pure as he thinks his conduct is. He has many generous and exalted qualities, but the canker of aristocracy wants ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... that which thou hast done: Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud: Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults, and even I in this, Authorizing thy trespass with compare, Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss, Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are; For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,— Thy adverse party is thy advocate,— And 'gainst ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... was I rode for, you may imagine how this day in durance ate into me like a canker. With ordinary diligence the trooper who carried the news of me should have gone to Charlotte by way of Queensborough and returned by noon. But being of the same surly breed with his captain, 'twas full three of the clock before he came ambling back with an order to set me ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... But under a glaring sun, amid green fields and blue skies, all its wickedness is revealed without its beauty. You see its works, and little more. The flame is hardly noticed. All that is seen is a canker eating up God's works, cracking the bones of its prey,—for that horrible cracking is uglier than all stage-scene glares,—cruelly and shamelessly under the very eye of the great, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... beloved country, the Queen of the Waters," said he, "I could find it in my heart to be glad at this destruction which has come upon this vain and feeble generation. You have spent your life upon the seas, Magro. You do not know of know how it has been with us on the land. But I have seen this canker grow upon us which now leads us to our death. I and others have gone down into the market-place to plead with the people, and been pelted with mud for our pains. Many a time have I pointed to Rome, and said, 'Behold these people, who bear arms themselves, ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had, like the canker-worm, Consumed her early prime: The rose grew pale, and left her cheek; She died ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... say That we shall see and know our friends in heaven: If that be true, I shall see my boy again; For, since the birth of Cain, the first male child, To him that did but yesterday suspire, There was not such a gracious creature born. But now will canker sorrow eat my bud, And chase the native beauty from his cheek; And he will look as hollow as a ghost, As dim and meagre as an ague's fit; And so he'll die; and, rising so again, When I shall meet him in the court of heaven I shall not know him: therefore, never—never— Shall I behold ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... think so?" she said doubtfully. "That is an uplifting thought." Then she added in a low voice, "There is one thing more. It is very unworthy, I am afraid, but it is a canker that is eating my heart out. And that is the mortification of it. Can you picture the thing to yourself? Can you form any idea of how I felt? It grows worse the more ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... point of the intellect, or as truth. But all is sour, if seen as experience. Details are melancholy; the plan is seemly and noble. In the actual world—the painful kingdom of time and place—dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. Round it all the Muses sing. But grief cleaves to names, and persons, and the partial interests ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... it eats and sleeps, and hath such senses As we have, such. This gallant which thou see'st Was in the wreck; and, but he's something stain'd With grief, that's beauty's canker,[390-105] thou mightst call him A goodly person: he hath lost his fellows, And strays about to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... were deceived in death, then the canker of this deceit would eat into all things, and the stars would shrivel ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... attends money got with ease, namely, that it is never hoarded; otherwise, as we have frequent opportunities of growing rich, that canker care might prey upon our quiet, as it doth on others; but our money stock we spend as fast as we acquire it; usually at least, for I speak not without exception; thus it gives us mirth only, and no trouble. Indeed, the luxury of our lives might introduce diseases, did not our daily exercise ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... (Ranunculaceae) Common Meadow Buttercup, Tall Crowfoot or Cuckoo Flower; Tall Meadow Rue; Liver-leaf, Hepatica, Liverwort or Squirrel Cup; Wood Anemone or Wind Flower; Virgin's Bower, Virginia Clematis or Old Man's Beard; Marsh Marigold, Meadow-gowan or American Cowslip; Gold-thread or Canker-root; Wild Columbine; Black Cohosh, Black Snakeroot or Tall Bugbane; White Bane-berry ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... whole life into account. Few give themselves the trouble to study his beginnings, and few, therefore, give weight enough to the fact that he made a false start. He, the ground of whose nature was an acrid common-sense, whose eye magnified the canker till it effaced the rose, began as what would now be called a romantic poet. With no mastery of verse, for even the English heroic (a balancing-pole which has enabled so many feebler men to walk the ticklish rope of momentary success) ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... sermon on the 'Riginal Cuss' that was pronounced on things in gineral, when Adam fell, and showed how every thing was allowed to go contrary ever since. There was pig-weed, and pusley, and Canady thistles, cut-worms, and bag-worms, and canker-worms, to say nothin' of rattlesnakes. The doctor made it very impressive and sort o' improvin'; but Huldy, she told me, goin' home, that she hardly could keep from laughin' two or three times in the sermon when she thought of old Tom a standin' ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... not more. His house of Rimmon this he calls, Girt with small bones instead of walls. First, in a niche, more black than jet, His idol-cricket there is set: Then in a polished oval by There stands his idol-beetle-fly: Next in an arch, akin to this, His idol-canker seated is: Then in a round is placed by these His golden god, Cantharides. So that, where'er ye look, ye see, No capital, no cornice free, Or frieze, from this fine frippery. Now this the fairies would have known, Theirs is a ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... makes Oppression feel. 65 Sweet Flower of Hope! free Nature's genial child! That didst so fair disclose thy early bloom, Filling the wide air with a rich perfume! For thee in vain all heavenly aspects smil'd; From the hard world brief respite could they win— 70 The frost nipp'd sharp without, the canker prey'd within! Ah! where are fled the charms of vernal Grace, And Joy's wild gleams that lighten'd o'er thy face? Youth of tumultuous soul, and haggard eye! Thy wasted form, thy hurried steps I view, 75 On thy wan forehead starts the lethal dew, And oh! ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... relation to life, or quarrelling about languages no one ever uses, blunts their sensibilities. At all events, they have none of that loyalty distinguishing members of other learned professions. The canker of jealousy eats ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... sickness is so; they cannot have names enough, from what it does, nor where it is, but they must extort names from what it is like, what it resembles, and but in some one thing, or else they would lack names; for the wolf, and the canker, and the polypus are so; and that question whether there be more names or things, is as perplexed in sicknesses as in any thing else; except it be easily resolved upon that side that there are more sicknesses ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... It is thought that his punishment consists in nightly visits to the cell in which Bernardo died, and nightly endurance of the sight of his daughter's anguish; some also say that the skeleton of his victim is presented to his eyes, beaming with light, and that every ray eats into his soul like a canker. I do not answer for all these tales, but this is the universal belief. I merely relate to your favors the common talk of the peasantry, ever ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... to hold old Mr. Thorpe responsible for the fresh canker that gnawed at her soul. But for that encounter in his library, she might have proceeded with confidence instead of the uneasiness that now attended her every step. She could not free herself of the fear that Braden might after all succeed in his efforts to persuade the old man ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... King ... Get thee behind me, Milton! Thou savourest not the things that be of truth and loyalty, but of pride, bitterness, and falsehood. There will be a time, though such a Shimei, a dead dog in Abishai's phrase, escape for a while ... It is no marvel if this canker-worm Milton, &c. ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... I observe a paper in the last 'Contemporary Review,' announcing for a discovery patent to all mankind that the colours of flowers were made "to attract insects"![9] They will next hear that the rose was made for the canker, and the body of man ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... remember the earthquake that would whelm them if once the pent volcano burst, if once the black mass covered below took flame and broke to the surface! Statesmen multiply their prisons, and strengthen their laws against the crime that is done—and they never take the canker out of the bud, they never save the young child from pollution. Their political economy never studies prevention; it never cleanses the sewers, it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... I shall ask that sacrifice of you. A part of your brain is asleep now, but it is a very active and insistent part when awake. In time you might revert—and resentment is a fatal canker; but let's leave it open. It is generally a mistake to settle things off-hand. Let them alone ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the dream foregone, foregone, The deed foreborne for ever, The worm regret will canker on, And ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... married," said Lady Markland, rising hurriedly, and bringing it from the table. "Look at it; did you ever see a more hopeful face? He was so fresh; he was so full of spirits. Who could have thought there was any canker in ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... with a thousand wine-casks—call the hoard A million rather—in his cellars stored, He drinks sharp vinegar: nay, if, when nigh A century old, on straw he yet will lie, While in his chest rich coverlets, the prey Of moth and canker, moulder and decay, Few men can see much madness in his whim, Because the mass of mortals ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... the peachy cheeks of the children held aloft for his inspection, and meeting a fire of playful sallies and kindly inquiries. As he did so, he was sensitively aware that it fell to him to break up the peace of this household. Only he knew the canker that had begun to ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... until it reached The palace of Duke Vladislaw. He heard With righteous wrath his injured subjects' charge Against presumptuous aliens: how these blocked His avenues, his bridges; bared to the sun The canker-taint of Prague's obscurest coigne; Paraded past the churches of the Lord One who denied Him, one by them hailed Christ. Enough! This cloud, no bigger than one's hand, Gains overweening bulk. Prague harbored, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... by saying that the discontent of America was so great, that, in 1766, the British Parliament was compelled to repeal the Stamp Act. The people made great rejoicings, but took care to keep Liberty Tree well pruned, and free from caterpillars and canker worms. They foresaw, that there might yet be occasion for them to assemble under ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... welcome to the butts: Now I'll have my ten shillings in spite of your guts. The French canker consume ye, you were an old Frenchman! De gol' button, gol' ringa, bugla lace! you cosen'd me then. My lords, I beseech ye, that at Tyburn he may totter, For instead of gold the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... march of time seems to have been arrested amidst the decay of the place, since the bell of the church clock rusted from its bearings and the index of the old sun-dial fell a prey to accumulated canker. The spring brings a few green buds and feeble leaves upon the grimy trees; the summer serves to accumulate the store of dust and torn paper and shreds of light rubbish which the autumn wind swirls into neglected corners on the dim evenings when the ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... Because my blessings are abused, Must I be censured, cursed, accused? Even virtue's self by knaves is made A cloak to carry on the trade; And power (when lodged in their possession) Grows tyranny, and rank oppression. 40 Thus, when the villain crams his chest, Gold is the canker of the breast; 'Tis avarice, insolence, and pride, And every shocking vice beside. But when to virtuous hands 'tis given, It blesses, like the dews of heaven: Like Heaven, it hears the orphan's cries, And wipes the tears from widows' eyes; Their crimes on gold ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... The ground beetles are mostly cannibals, and should not be destroyed. The large black beetle, with coppery dots, makes short work with the Colorado potato beetles; and a bright green beetle will climb trees to get a meal of canker worms. Ichneumon flies are among our most useful insects. The much-abused dragon flies are perfectly harmless to us, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... health and physical beauty, and yet there was a flaw which marred the whole. It was true that he was light-hearted, always and ever ready for a rout, whether with women or with men, whether with wine or with dice; but under all this brave show there was a canker which ate with subtile slowness, but surely. To be disillusioned at the age of sixteen by one's own father! To be given gold and duplicate keys to the wine-cellars! To be eye-witness of Roman knights over which this father had presided like ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... mad-house would be at once the best remedy and punishment. Fifty thousand men organised in societies, the object of which is—what young France would denominate—philosophical plunder; a relief from the canker-eating chains of matrimony; a total destruction of all objects of art; and the common enjoyment of stolen goods. It is against this unholy confederacy that the moral force of LOUIS-PHILIPPE'S Government is opposed. It is to put down and destroy these bands of social ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... where many a canker gnaws Within the walls they fancy free from sin; I know how officers infringe their laws, I know the corners where the men climb in; I know who broke the woodland fence to bits And what platoon attacked the Shirley cow, While the dull Staff, for all their frantic chits, Know ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various

... The canker was still there, doing its bitter work. For forty years Miss Matoaca had had her revenge, and even in the grave her ghost would not lie quiet and let him rest. In his watery little eyes and his protruding, childish lip, I read the story of fruitless ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... descended to no minutiae of sin, he was a plain, blunt, coarse wretch, and his sense threw something respectable around his vices. But in Clarke you saw the traces of happier opportunities of better education; it was in him not the coarseness of manner so much as the sickening, universal canker of vulgarity of mind. Had Houseman money in his purse, he would have paid a debt and relieved a friend from mere indifference; not so the other. Had he been overflowing with wealth, he would have slipped from a creditor, and duped a friend; there was ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... his strolling rounds, To feasts or fairs in ither towns, Wark bodies fling their trantlooms doun, To hear the famous Birnie. The crabbit carles forget to snarl, The canker'd cuiffs forget to quarrel, And gilphies forget the stock and horle, And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Babylonia, to Persia, Greece, and Rome, had not been acquired without heavy loss. The system of slavery which allowed the few to think, while the many were constrained to toil as beasts, had eaten like a canker into the heart of society. The Roman world was repeating the oft-told tale of the past, and sinking into the lifeless formalism of which Egypt was the type. Man had ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... disquieting effect upon Bess, and Venters fancied that she entertained the same thought as to future seclusion. The breaking of their solitude, though by a well-meaning friend, had not only dispelled all its dream and much of its charm, but had instilled a canker of fear. Both had seen the footprint ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... pricks, burns, and the blow of some heavy falling object which may puncture, bruise, or crush the cartilage, are the common direct causes of cartilaginous quittor. Besides being a sequel to the other forms of quittor, it sometimes develops as a complication in suppurative corn, canker, grease, laminitis, and punctured wounds of the foot. Animals used for heavy draft, and those with flat feet and low heels, are more liable to the disease than others, for the reason that they are more exposed to injury. Rough roads also predispose to the disease by increasing liability ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture



Words linked to "Canker" :   cankerous, influence, come down, blight canker, plant disease, infect, sicken, pestilence, stem canker, ulcer, apple canker, chestnut canker, canker brake



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org