canker

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English canker, also cancor and cancre,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English cancer, also cancor,^[5][6][7][8] borrowed from Latin cancer (“crab; malignant tumour”).^[6][7][8] In Middle English the form was reinforced by Anglo-Norman cancre and Old French cancre, a variant of chancre;^[6][2][9] Etymonline, Hoad and the Merriam-Webster Unabridged call the form with c- Old North French.^[7][9][3] The Anglo-Norman word, recorded from 1113–19, meant the sign Cancer, an abscess or growth, a canker-worm and a crab.^[10] Klein and Skeat derive the English word from the French form alone.^[11][12] The words cancer and chancre are doublets of canker from the same Latin word.^[4][7][13] In Latin the medical sense was a translation of Ancient Greek καρκίνος (karkínos, “crab”), which Galen explained by the crablike pattern of swollen veins around a tumour,^[14][13] and the American Heritage Dictionary refers the Latin word to the root Proto-Indo-European *kar- (“hard”).^[8][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A chronic, spreading sore or ulcer, in early use also the disease cancer: before 1000, in Bald's Leechbook.^[6][15] Bosworth–Toller glosses the Old English word as an eating or spreading disease.^[5] Barnhart dates it to about 1000, in Ælfric, and the form cancor to about 1150.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Canker was the ordinary English word for the disease until the 17th century;^[14][16] Etymonline says about 1700, by which time cancer had come back in a more scientific sense.^[7] It then narrowed to sores of the mouth,^[7] and became the term for various plant diseases.^[16] Already in the 15th century it was the name of caterpillars that eat buds and leaves (1440, obsolete by 1858),^[6][7] and of rust or verdigris eating into metal, now only regional;^[6][3] the corrupting influence of the figurative sense follows before 1475, in Lydgate.^[6] The plant disease is recorded from 1555, in Eden's Peter Martyr,^[6][17] and Skeat thought that this sense might have a separate, Germanic source.^[12] A disease of a horse's foot and an inflammation of a dog's ear are recorded in 1753, and a disease of pigeons and poultry in 1850.^[6] Johnson (1755) listed the worm first, and suspected that the word was cancer accidentally written with a k for bad qualities in a lesser degree.^[18] The verb, formed from the noun, first meant to ulcerate a part of the body;^[6] Etymonline dates "to corrode, corrupt" to the late 14th century,^[7] while the OED has the figurative use before 1450, in Hoccleve.^[6] In dialect, Wright records it for a mouth sore and a sore caused by verdigris, spelled conker in Wiltshire, Dorset and Somerset; for rust and blight; and in Cumberland for ill temper, a sense the OED records in Scots from about 1635.^[19][6] In Cornwall a canker was a crab.^[19] In dialect the dog rose was also called canker, from the late 16th century.^[17]

Timeline

• before 1000 – a spreading sore, a cancer, as Old English cancer.^[6][15]
• c. 1150 – the form cancor.^[4]
• before 1425 – verb, to ulcerate a part of the body.^[6] Etymonline dates the verb to the late 14th century,^[7] and the Merriam-Webster Unabridged to the 14th century.^[3]
• c. 1425 – an ulcer in the mouth; rust or verdigris on metal.^[6]
• 1440 – a caterpillar that attacks buds and leaves.^[6]
• before 1450 – verb, to corrupt, to consume slowly.^[6]
• before 1475 – noun, a destructive influence that corrupts.^[6]
• 1555 – a disease of fruit trees and other plants.^[6]
• 1600 – verb, intransitive, to fester or decay.^[6]
• 1610 – verb, to cause canker in a plant.^[6]
• 1753 – a disease of a horse's foot; an inflammation of the ear in dogs and cats.^[6]
• 1850 – a disease of pigeons and poultry.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. An erosive or spreading sore; an ulcer, especially in the mouth (see canker sore).^[3][20][6]
2. (veterinary) A disease of animals, such as softening of the horn in a horse's hoof, an inflammation of the outer ear in dogs and cats, or ulceration of the mouth and throat in birds.^[20][6]
3. A disease of fruit trees and other woody plants, with a patch of dead tissue and an open wound in the bark.^[3][20][6]
4. Something evil that spreads and corrupts: Envy was a canker in the old firm.^[20][6]
5. (dialect) Rust or verdigris.^[3][6][19]
6. (Scottish) Bad temper.^[6][19]
7. (obsolete, 1440–1858) A caterpillar that destroys buds and leaves; a cankerworm.^{[6][3][17][18]}
8. (obsolete) Gangrene.^[3][2]

Verb

1. To corrupt or consume slowly, as a canker does: Old grudges had cankered his mind.^[3][6][17]
2. To fester or decay; to become infected with canker.^[3][6][17]
3. To cause canker in a plant.^[6]
4. (obsolete, 1460–1880) To rust or corrode.^[6][3][17]

Word family

• cankerous
• canker sore

Related words

• chancre
• cancer
• carcinoma

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
14. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
15. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
16. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
17. ^ a b c d e f Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
18. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
20. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins