as in to poison
to lower in character, dignity, or quality
such shameless ambulance chasing cankers the legal profession
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in rot
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of canker
Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 4 Oct. 2024
Most of the mature chestnut trees had vanished — the victim of canker fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica.
—Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 4 Oct. 2024
Tim Johnson, chicagotribune.com, 1 Aug. 2019
See All Example Sentences for canker
Verb
The canker fungus lives on in the inner bark of fledgling trees and encircles the stem.
—Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 4 Oct. 2024
Most of the mature chestnut trees had vanished — the victim of canker fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica.
—Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 4 Oct. 2024
Noun
Start by removing all blighted twigs and cankered branches 6 to 10 inches below the edge of visible infection.
—Tim Johnson, chicagotribune.com, 1 Aug. 2019
See All Example Sentences for canker
Recent Examples of Synonyms for canker
Verb
-
Still, no amount of artistic success could heal the rift that had poisoned the group.—
Ernesto Lechner,
Rolling Stone,
21 June 2025
-
The press, like the government and the judiciary, is part of a system that’s poisoned from within.—
Charles McNulty,
Los Angeles Times,
20 June 2025
Noun
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But the rot was there all along — buried beneath years of brand-building, PR campaigns, industry awards and glossy features.—
Rob Shuter,
HollywoodReporter,
18 June 2025
-
OpenAI has exposed the rot at the core of the liberal-arts-degree factory; now, professors turn to AI tools to grade papers written by ChatGPT.—
Jayson Greene,
Time,
17 June 2025
Verb
-
Imagine an attacker subtly corrupting the data that trains a spam filter or fraud detector—the AI might then start letting threats slip through or flagging the wrong items.—
Ronen Cojocaru,
Forbes.com,
20 June 2025
-
The peasants followed out of a need to earn a living, but they were frequently corrupted by the ideals of luxury and idleness exemplified by the rich, further driving them into poverty.—
Ben Woollard,
JSTOR Daily,
18 June 2025
Noun
-
Certainly not for novelty’s sake; we are hardly starved for dramas of mental decay, or for the stupendous feats of acting that are often achieved in their service.—
Justin Chang,
New Yorker,
19 June 2025
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That’s because warming increases the rate of decay of falling organic debris, so that less of it reaches the twilight zone.—
Tim Vernimmen,
JSTOR Daily,
19 June 2025
Verb
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One of the challenges is that signals in fiber-optic cables degrade over distance.—
Reed Albergotti,
semafor.com,
24 June 2025
-
Israel wants to degrade Iran's missiles and nuclear program.—
Brittney Melton,
NPR,
23 June 2025
Noun
-
Health Issues Exotic has prostate cancer and cancer in his left lung.—
Nick Mordowanec,
MSNBC Newsweek,
29 June 2025
-
Overall, the rate of death seven days after mRNA vaccinations has been lower than the background rates among the general population for the most common causes of death — such as heart disease, cancer and stroke.—
Michael A. Hiltzik,
Mercury News,
28 June 2025
Verb
-
The Astros traded Pressly as a pure salary dump, influenced in part by his deteriorating relationship with general manager Dana Brown.—
Chandler Rome,
New York Times,
28 June 2025
-
Thousands of small communities whose economies once revolved around plants have deteriorated to depression, drugs, and dollar stores.—
Ryan Craig,
Forbes.com,
27 June 2025
Noun
-
The film’s sheer, unrelenting squalor can wear you down, too.—
Stephanie Bunbury,
Deadline,
19 May 2025
-
Women gather together, all fully covered in the Islamic niqab, as hundreds of young children from strikingly diverse ethnic backgrounds wander through the squalor.—
Richard Engel,
NBC News,
12 Feb. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Canker.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/canker. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
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