fester
To become septic; to become rotten.
Noun
- A fistula.
- A sore or an ulcer of the skin.
- The larger the Spider, the warmer the climate or season of the year, and the more susceptible the wounded individual, so much worse will the effects be; and it is no therefore no wonder that people who would have a...
- While to the fingers and toes, which are frequently the seat of spontaneous festers, &c., irritation is kept up [if a hot poultice is applied], the skin is thickened, and rendered less liable to be permeated by matter;...
- He has been away so long and so often, there has been such mismanagement under a long minority, such changes and such misrule, such a hard hand and such a high hand, that the whole place is a fester. - 1864 July, “The...
- The condition of something that festers; a festering; a festerment.
Origin
Inherited from Middle English festre, festur, borrowed from Old French festre (cognate with Italian fistola, Occitan fistola, Spanish fístula), from Latin fistula. The verb is derived from the noun, while the “condition of something that festers” noun sense is derived from the verb. Doublet of fistula.
Forms
Verb
- To become septic; to become rotten.
- and she for the despyte of her sones dethe wrought by her subtyl craftes that syr Vrre shold neuer be hole but euer his woundes shold one tyme feyster & another tyme blede "and she, for the despite of her son’s death,...
- [W]ounds immedicable / Ranckle, and feſter, and gangrene, / To black mortification. - 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London:...
- On the day of my inauguration, the director of the Nationalist Party county office ordered the Chungli mayor to stop trash collection. Because I could not command the Chungli sanitation department directly—it is...
- To worsen, especially due to lack of attention.
- Deal with the problem immediately; do not let it fester.
- All this time hatred, kept down by fear, festered in the hearts of the children of the soil. - 1855, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XVII, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume IV,...
- But the longer the problems are left to fester, the worse they will become. - 2024 April 3, Philip Haigh, “Discord over Avanti West Coast is part of a wider problem”, in RAIL, number 1006, page 53:
- To cause to fester or rankle.
- For which I burnt in inward sweltring hate, / And festred rankling malice in my breast, / Till I might belke revenge upon his eyes: […] - c. 1599–1600, John Marston, Antonios Reuenge. The Second Part. As it hath beene...