cankered

past tense of canker

Example Sentences

Recent Examples of Synonyms for cankered
Verb
  • There’s often an arch detachment where the singer tries to pretend as though they haven’t actually been poisoned by being online themselves.
    Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 30 Oct. 2025
  • In the first half of the year, thousands of sea lions and dolphins stranded along beaches in Southern California, many found dead, poisoned by domoic acid created by toxic algae.
    Erika I. Ritchie, Oc Register, 29 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • Ancient samples, degraded over centuries, often contain fragments too small for PCR to amplify.
    Aamir Khollam, Interesting Engineering, 24 Oct. 2025
  • In their world, which is also ours, selfhood has degraded into taste, preferences, demography, and outlays of attention and money.
    Katy Waldman, New Yorker, 20 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • Some people think today’s pro athletes are too wealthy to be corrupted.
    Danny Funt, New Yorker, 28 Oct. 2025
  • Files were easily lost or corrupted.
    Christopher Vourlias, Variety, 8 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • After accounting for lifestyle variables like exercise, the effects weakened a bit as, for example, more active people tend to spend more time outdoors.
    New Atlas, New Atlas, 24 Oct. 2025
  • San Francisco artificial intelligence giant OpenAI weakened its chatbots’ anti-suicide protections in the run-up to the death of teenager Adam Raine, according to new claims in a lawsuit by the boy’s parents.
    Ethan Baron, Mercury News, 24 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • Plus, the company outlook index deteriorated sharply, indicating an increasingly negative sentiment about future conditions.
    Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Time, 22 Oct. 2025
  • In the years before her death, Warren’s relationship with his mother had deteriorated.
    Alexandra Schonfeld, PEOPLE, 21 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • Your homes may have been damaged or destroyed and your communities and towns no longer look the same.
    Abigail Adams, PEOPLE, 29 Oct. 2025
  • Many tender crops die back with the first fall frost, while hardier plants may linger longer but still be damaged by freezes.
    Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 28 Oct. 2025
Verb
  • The real fiends were the ones who perverted science, who attacked this misunderstood giant out of fear, who branded him as something unholy and unworthy to exist, who gave him life but didn’t give him love.
    David Fear, Rolling Stone, 9 Sep. 2025
  • Instead, the concept has been perverted to mean higher-ed grandees' exclusive right to determine who participates in scholarly life.
    Ilya Shapiro, MSNBC Newsweek, 14 Aug. 2025
Verb
  • Trump's No Kings video was truly depraved.
    Bill Goodykoontz, AZCentral.com, 20 Oct. 2025
  • DiCaprio has played disturbed and depraved individuals in Scorsese’s films before, but Killers of the Flower Moon is something different.
    Tim Grierson, Vulture, 26 Sep. 2025
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.

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Cite this Entry

“Cankered.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cankered. Accessed 2 Nov. 2025.

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