1
as in steams
to be excited or emotionally stirred up with anger
that kind of rude treatment from a young person makes me rankle
Synonyms & Similar Words
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2
as in angers
to make angry
it rankles me when some schools can't even afford paper and pencils for the students
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of rankles
The International Court of Justice in 1962 awarded sovereignty to Cambodia over an area that included the 1,000-year-old Preah Vihear temple, which still rankles many Thais.
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CBS News, 8 Dec. 2025
This way of peering at screen culture from an inexact distance, which also comes up in a scolding scene where Ethan scrolls aimlessly through something like TikTok, rankles in a play that is otherwise so precise about physical time and space.
—Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 31 Oct. 2025
This rankles some of her fans, particularly a stalker who begins murdering those boosting her acting ambitions.
—Declan Gallagher, Entertainment Weekly, 30 Oct. 2025
What rankles even more about 2025 is that, in other late-season swoons, the Mets have at least been tracked down by an adversary.
—Tim Britton, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2025
Omar’s growing outrage, especially when precious time is lost because of jammed phone lines, troubling silences and false assumptions, rankles Mahdi, the most overstretched of anyone at the call center.
—Sheri Linden, HollywoodReporter, 3 Sep. 2025
That decision still rankles some Republicans, years later.
—Alexander Bolton, The Hill, 18 Aug. 2025
But he's paired with Travis (Davidson), whose cheery demeanor increasingly rankles until their truck is hijacked and the two have to bond to survive.
—Marco Della Cava, USA Today, 6 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for rankles
Verb
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Humidity often corrodes cables and steams camera lenses.—
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The clip then smash-cuts to a scene of Bruce as a child listening to his parents fight in the next room, and we’re meant to understand that the joy and power that steams off of the stage is a cure for the pain of childhood wounds.—
Verb
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What angers me is thinking about what could have been.—
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And nothing angers the Survivor gods more than reality TV hubris.—
Verb
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Conflict rages over resources, but people are, for the most part, decent.—
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Then, a police-like force rages through their East Village neighborhood, threatening Renata’s friends, lovers, and the memories of those who have died.—
Verb
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Investigative reporting is bad enough; often what really infuriates him is jokes.—
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Elsewhere, the photo of Cartman is a reference to his reaction of Clyde’s incendiary new podcast that has a right wing theme that infuriates the perpetual instigator.—
Verb
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Longer-term, Indomo seeks to tackle conditions including keloids, boils and more via its ClearPen technology.—
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Gretchen is just as bad as Tamra, two boils on the same hairy ass.—
Verb
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While this violation enrages the village’s women, the men who make up the Panchayat (village council) try and fail to cast her out of town.—
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The funniest part to me is that amid this violence — as someone is literally trying to kill him — the thing that enrages Beom-mo the most is when his wife’s top starts to slip down.—
Verb
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Saito burns about 7,000 calories per day and has lost 13 pounds so far.—
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Unlike conventional scramjets that rely on kerosene, SPARTAN burns hydrogen, producing zero carbon emissions while enabling reusable, low-maintenance hypersonic flight.—
Verb
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One of its two young sibling protagonists, Amber (Bianca Belle), channels her feelings about the recent death of her mother into drawings of creatures born out of her troubled imagination, some of whom enact violence against the classmate who annoys her.—
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There's just one thing about Claire Danes that annoys Matthew Rhys.—
Cite this Entry
“Rankles.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/rankles. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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