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Exasperate vs Rankle - What's the difference?

exasperate | rankle | Related terms |

Exasperate is a related term of rankle.


As verbs the difference between exasperate and rankle

is that exasperate is to frustrate, vex, provoke, or annoy; to make angry while rankle is (intransitive) to cause irritation or deep bitterness.

As an adjective exasperate

is (obsolete) exasperated; embittered.

exasperate

English

Verb

(exasperat)
  • To frustrate, vex, provoke, or annoy; to make angry.
  • * , Macbeth , act 3, sc. 6:
  • this report
    Hath so exasperate the king that he
    Prepares for some attempt of war.
  • * 1851 , , Moby Dick , ch. 3:
  • The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads.
  • * 1853 , , Bleak House , ch. 11:
  • Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants; always shutting the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy, exasperating the public.
  • * 1987 , " Woman of the Year: Corazon Aquino," Time , 5 Jan:
  • [S]he exasperates her security men by acting as if she were protected by some invisible shield.
  • * 2007 , " Loyal Mail," Times Online (UK), 4 June (retrieved 7 Oct 2010):
  • News that Adam Crozier, Royal Mail chief executive, is set to receive a bumper bonus will exasperate postal workers.

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) Exasperated; embittered.
  • (Shakespeare)
  • * Elizabeth Browning
  • Like swallows which the exasperate dying year / Sets spinning.

    See also

    * exacerbate ----

    rankle

    English

    Verb

    (rankl)
  • (intransitive) To cause irritation or deep bitterness.
  • To fester.
  • a splinter rankles in the flesh
  • * Rowe
  • a malady that burns and rankles inward
  • * Burke
  • This would have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the people.

    Quotations

    * 1590 — , Book I, Canto X *: But yet the cause and root of all his ill,
    Inward corruption and infected sin,
    Not purg'd nor heald, behind remained still,
    And festring sore did rankle yet within, * 1850 — , chapter XIV *: You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! * 1890 — , chapter IX *: The close proximity of the two countries, the relative positions of their ports, made the naval situation particularly strong; and the alliance which was dictated by sound policy, by family ties, and by just fear of England's sea power, was further assured to France by recent and still existing injuries that must continue to rankle with Spain. Gibraltar, Minorca, and Florida were still in the hands of England; no Spaniard could be easy till this reproach was wiped out.

    Synonyms

    * (to cause irritation) embitter, irritate * (to fester) fester

    Anagrams

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