as in to poison
to lower in character, dignity, or quality
such shameless ambulance chasing cankers the legal profession
Synonyms & Similar Words
Relevance
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in rot
Related Words
Dissimilar Words
Example Sentences
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of canker
Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 1 May 2025
The oldest stems, however, are also struggling, given they are affected by sooty bark canker, leaf spot and conk fungal disease.
—John Yoo and John Shu, Newsweek, 24 Jan. 2025
Tim Johnson, chicagotribune.com, 1 Aug. 2019
See All Example Sentences for canker
Verb
Symptoms include brown-ringed leaf spots, dark stem cankers or zones of dead/dying tissue, and eventually, the collapse of plants in entire sections of a mass grouping.
—Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 1 May 2025
The oldest stems, however, are also struggling, given they are affected by sooty bark canker, leaf spot and conk fungal disease.
—John Yoo and John Shu, Newsweek, 24 Jan. 2025
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
-
But Antonio distracts him by accusing him in the town square of sending Justina off to El Alcazar and poisoning his son.—
Dave Nemetz,
TVLine,
12 Oct. 2025
-
One of the jurors said deliberations were poisoned by a belief among some jurors that a member of the panel had been paid off by Weinstein or his lawyers.—
Eva Roytburg,
Fortune,
11 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
Shortly after, an unusual rot begins to affect the farm and its inhabitants.—
Big Think,
Big Think,
14 Oct. 2025
-
What begins as a search for a killer becomes a fight to uncover the rot beneath the town’s quiet surface.—
Leo Barraclough,
Variety,
6 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
Files were easily lost or corrupted.—
Christopher Vourlias,
Variety,
8 Oct. 2025
-
As a model named Carl, stuck in a relationship corrupted by microcelebrity and Instagram view counts, Dickinson ticks with exasperation and sarcastic logic, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide and staring.—
Carrie Battan,
Vulture,
6 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
Produced by the slow decay of radioactive particles, which is a natural process that occurs in all rocks, geothermal energy was long considered too expensive and geographically constrained to compete with other renewables.—
Georgina Jedikovska,
Interesting Engineering,
10 Oct. 2025
-
Linda didn’t truly solve any of those problems — not her child’s illness, not her client’s own motherhood panic, not her ceiling’s decay.—
Matthew Jacobs,
Vulture,
10 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
The team discovered that oxygen can degrade riboflavin when exposed to light, which leads to self-discharge.—
Aamir Khollam,
Interesting Engineering,
16 Oct. 2025
-
In Brazil, wildcat gold mining degrades the Amazon rainforest and imperils Indigenous groups.—
Charlie Campbell,
Time,
15 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
High-risk patients who carry a genetic condition that puts them at higher risk of colon cancer might need more frequent testing than someone at average risk.—
Ken Alltucker,
USA Today,
12 Oct. 2025
-
But then, four years later, his cancer came back.—
Stephanie Nolasco,
FOXNews.com,
12 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
Kabul wants to hedge against its deteriorating relationship with its former patron Islamabad, which accuses the Taliban of harboring a separate but allied group that has carried out deadly attacks inside Pakistan.—
Happymon Jacob,
Time,
16 Oct. 2025
-
Those delaminations deteriorated between dive 80 and dive 88, its final dive, resulting in a local buckling failure that led to the implosion.—
Michael Dorgan,
FOXNews.com,
16 Oct. 2025
Noun
-
But even past that, Tactics is directly about how the rich and powerful view the poor and weak as almost subhuman, practically delighting in the squalor and suffering normal people go through.—
Hayes Madsen,
Rolling Stone,
24 Sep. 2025
-
Nearly two weeks after San Jose began dismantling its largest homeless encampment, the city is set to open its first-ever safe sleeping site, which will provide tents for dozens of the approximately 370 residents who have lived in dilapidated RVs and squalor at Columbus Park.—
Devan Patel,
Mercury News,
31 Aug. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Canker.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/canker. Accessed 19 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share