Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Fester   Listen
verb
Fester  v. i.  (past & past part. festered; pres. part. festering)  
1.
To generate pus; to become imflamed and suppurate; as, a sore or a wound festers. "Wounds immedicable Rankle, and fester, and gangrene." "Unkindness may give a wound that shall bleed and smart, but it is treachery that makes it fester." "Hatred... festered in the hearts of the children of the soil."
2.
To be inflamed; to grow virulent, or malignant; to grow in intensity; to rankle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Fester" Quotes from Famous Books



... three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a silver-haired and highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the crimsoned-curtained room, with no box of pictures on the table, but only a decanter of most excellent Madeira. Yet his heart still seemed to fester with ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... been danger from his feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had passed and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger had also passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to fester (Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course. Then fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... be valuable certainly, but if he goes on as he is he will soon be in a high fever; his wounds will grow angry and fester. While yesterday he seemed in a fair way to recovery, I should be sorry to give any favourable opinion as to what may happen if this goes on. Is there no one who could take care of ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... a mule which has a swelling on the throat about where the throatlatch touches. It just seems to be swollen hard and not sore. I am using caustic liniment to fester it so it will come to a head and I can open it, but the liniment does not seem to do much good. The mule is losing flesh and does ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... approved handbook, and during the recreations raise discussions on details of good manners. Ask your friends candidly to point out your defects. It is far easier to be admonished by one friend whose correction is swathed in soft charity than await till a dozen sneerers send their poisoned arrows to fester in your heart. In correcting yourselves and asking your friends to admonish you, it will assist you to pocket your pride, to remember that three such weighty issues as the efficiency of your ministry, the honour of the priesthood, and the comfort of your future home will in a large measure be influenced ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... to eat, and our wounds began to fester, so that we could hardly move at all. We should undoubtedly have perished, if, on the third day, a band of friendly Indians of another tribe had not gone to Taos and reported the fight to the commanding officer of the troops there. These Indians had heard of our trouble with the Utes, and knowing ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... They fester and multiply like maggots. They meant nothing—nothing, my dear, nothing. No more than your work people mean here, whose crowning stupidity is their continuing to beget more stupid spawn for ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... amazingly. But he did not make the mistake of pushing his personalities too far. To a speaker of a certain sort nothing is easier than to sting to madness. If he likes, his every word is barbed. Wounds so given fester; they are not easily forgiven;—it is essential to a politician that he should have his firmest friends among the fools; or his climbing days will soon be over. Soon his sarcasms were at an end. He began to exchange them for sweet-sounding phrases. He actually ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... Mary our Saviour was horn, And on his head he wore a crown of thorn; If you believe this true, and mind it well, This hurt will never fester ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... by a sudden and vigorous blow to check this trouble on our frontier while it is in a nascent condition. The other plan would give it several months to fester and to extend itself; and, if there be among the Mohammedan populations in these regions the disposition to combine against us which is alleged, and which is indeed the justification of the measure proposed, how far might not the roots of the conspiracy stretch ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

... The thing that she now knew was not like her own little personal secrets, such as she had imprudently confided to Fraulein Schult. The words that she had overheard she could repeat to no one. She must carry them in her heart, like the barb of an arrow in a secret wound, where they would fester and grow more ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... be ready to fester in the wounds. No, we mustn't do it; they want cutting out with a proper knife. Look here, Ned; jump on your pony and go and find father. He'd like ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... feelings of eight years ago, to make a sour face of disgust over them, before she could shake them out of her head. Now they were gone, and he with them: the world, with May beginning, was too sweet a place for such vermin to fester in. She had swept and ridded herself, rinsed her mouth with pure water, and now could sit to her dinner ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... contiguous Bladesovers and for the gentlefolk, the surplus of population, all who were not good tenants nor good labourers, Church of England, submissive and respectful, were necessarily thrust together, jostled out of sight, to fester as they might in this place that had the colours and even the smells of a well-packed dustbin. They should be grateful even for that; that, one felt, was the theory ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... officer turned in their direction Tim shook his fist at him, this time becoming the incarnation of rage. "Turn yer ugly mug away!—turn it away, I tell ye, from a sight too blessed for yer dirty eyes to see!—ye cholera germ!—ye fester!—ye—ye——Oh, me darlin'," he wailed to the little nurse, "if ye'd but go deaf a minute whilst I tell 'im what's in me 'art!" And in disappointment he held his thumb to his nose, by this most desperate sign trying to express the insults his tongue ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... price is from three to seven-fifty, according to binding. Treatments cost from three dollars to ten, whether you come and get them or take them over the telephone. And we have no nonsense about charity, we don't worry about the poor who fester in our city slums; because poverty is a product of Mortal Mind, and we offer to all men a way to get rich right off the bat. You may; come to our marble churches and hear people testify how through the power of Divine Mind ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... eyes to it. The newspapers and magazines hush it up. No, no, don't give this to the readers, they want something pleasant, something optimistic! Suppress it! Don't let the light of publicity smite it and clear it up! Let it go on! Let the secret sore fester. It smells bad, it looks bad. Keep the surgeon away. We might lose subscribers, we might be accused of muck-raking. But I tell you," his voice rose, "this world will never be much better until we face the worst of it! Oh," he gave a heavy groan, "Myra! Myra! ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... common prudence had abandoned the ministers, and as if they meant to plunge themselves and us headlong into that gulf which stood gaping before them; by giving a year's notice of the project of their Stamp Act, they allowed time for all the discontents of that country to fester and come to a head, and for all the arrangements which factious men could make towards an opposition to the law. At the same time they carefully concealed from the eye of Parliament those remonstrances which they had actually received; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... to suppose that Solitude leads away from Humanity. On the contrary it is Nature who brings us near to Man, her spoilt and darling child. The enemies of their fellows are bred, not in deserts, but in cities, where human creatures fester together in heaps. The lovers of their fellows come out of solitude, like those hermits of the Thebaid, who fled far from cities, who crucified the flesh, who seemed to hang to the world by no more than a thread, and yet were infinite in their compassion, and thought ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis

... parched with thirst and pierced with sudden pain, A root his pillow and the earth his bed; Alone he met the King of terrors there; Whose wasting body, cumbering now the ground, Chandalas cast upon the passing stream To float and fester in the fiery sun, Till whirled by eddies, caught by roots, it lay A prey for vultures and ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... Helga frowned regretfully. "I cannot blame him if he will not speak to me," she said to Sigurd Haraldsson. "The nature of a high-born man is such that a blow is like poison in his blood. It must rankle and fester and break out before he can be healed. I do not think he could have been more lordlike in his father's castle than he was yesterday. Hereafter I shall treat him as honorably as I treat you, or ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... There's plenty i' the Seaton to help. We're gauin' to tak' the markis's cutter. She's a heap easier to lainch, an' she'll sail a heap fester." ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... not been destined soon to die; his wound, an inward canker from a copper bullet, that the surgeon had at length succeeded in extracting, took the form of a chronic fester disease. Since the night upon which he had been so extremely ill to be supposed dying, and yet had rallied, the doctors felt no apprehensions of his speedy death, though they gave no hopes ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth

... sultry time 'Twixt July and September, with the isle Sardinia and Maremma's pestilent fen, Had heap'd their maladies all in one foss Together; such was here the torment: dire The stench, as issuing steams from fester'd limbs. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... goes. Women, when I am dead, Open my heart, and there you will find written Two names, Philip and Calais; open his,— So that he have one,— You will find Philip only, policy, policy,— Ay, worse than that—not one hour true to me! Foul maggots crawling in a fester'd vice! Adulterous to the very heart of Hell. Hast thou ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn. Such social sores—the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet on into the midnight hour—such sores may run and fester, but not to ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... thee? What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, Shall crowd the banks to see? Shall all the happy shipmates then Stand singing brotherly? Or shall a haggard, ruthless few Warp her over and bring her to, While the many broken souls of me Fester down in the slaver's pen, And nothing to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... cannot suck her Mistres, therefore care must be taken to find out some body or other that will come and suck the young womans breasts for twelve pence a time; or else her breasts will grow hard with lumps and fester for want of being drawn. Or else also with the sucking ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... favori, komplezo. feast : regalo, festeno; festo. feather : plumo. feature : trajto. feed : nutri, mangxigi, pasxti. feel : palpi, senti. felt : felto. female : ino, virinseksa. fence : skermi; palisaro. ferment : fermenti. fern : filiko. ferret : cxasputoro, ferry-boat : pramo. fester : ulcerigxi, pusi. festival : festo. feudal : feuxdala. fever : febro. fibre : fibro. fife : fifro. fig : figo. fight : batal'i, -o. figure : cifero; figuro. figurative : figura. file : fajli, -ilo. film : filmo, tavoleto. filter : filtr'i, -ilo. fin : nagxilo. fine ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... duty. Next to preserving her, my most earnest wish is not to disturb your peace. I have nothing to expect, and little to fear, in life—There are wounds that can never be healed—but they may be allowed to fester in ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... privy, jakes; toilet, john, head; cess^, cesspool; sump, sough, cloaca, latrines, drain, sewer, common sewer; Cloacina; dust hole. sty, pigsty, lair, den, Augean stable^, sink of corruption; slum, rookery. V. be unclean, become unclean &c adj.; rot, putrefy, ferment, fester, rankle, reek; stink &c 401; mold, molder; go bad &c adj.. render unclean &c adj.; dirt, dirty; daub, blot, blur, smudge, smutch^, soil, smoke, tarnish, slaver, spot, smear; smirch; begrease^; dabble, drabble^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice to believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... his left hand. And this Sir Alphegus had a mother, the which was a great sorceress; and she, for the despite of her son's death, wrought by her subtle crafts that Sir Urre should never be whole, but ever his wounds should one time fester and another time bleed, so that he should never be whole until the best knight of the world had searched his wounds; and thus she made her avaunt, wherethrough it was known that Sir Urre ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... and the Irish people." From peculiar circumstances, the present writer has had more than ordinary opportunities of verifying the truth of this statement. The wound caused by a sarcastic expression may often fester far longer than the wound caused by a hasty blow. The evil caused by such language is by no means confined entirely to Protestants. There are, indeed, but few English Catholics who speak contemptuously of Ireland, of its people, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... name of AYER'S SARSAPARILLA, although it is composed of ingredients, some of which exceed the best of Sarsaparilla in alterative power. By its aid you may protect yourself from the suffering and danger of these disorders. Purge out the foul corruptions that rot and fester in the blood; purge out the causes of disease, and vigorous health will follow. By its peculiar virtues this remedy stimulates the vital functions, and thus expels the distempers which lurk within the system or burst out on any part ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... her corner again, while the captain said, "I will draw up some sea water, with which you must bathe her head. Smart's wound will fester I doubt; we have nothing here to ease that, I am grieved ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... 'fore long A nation all one piece, rich, peacefle, strong; 130 Make 'em Amerikin, an' they'll begin To love their country ez they loved their sin; Let 'em stay Southun, an' you've kep' a sore Ready to fester ez it done afore. No mortle man can boast of perfic' vision, But the one moleblin' thing is Indecision, An' th' ain't no futur' for the man nor state Thet out of j-u-s-t can't spell great. Some folks ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved. But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines, though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines was such, that scourging, branding, pillorying, would have been a trifle to it, there is reason to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... inward feelings in outward actions at Dawn's age, and being armed with a dish of water, to have thrown it on the nearest individual would have been a very mild ebullition; but I set my teeth against outward expression and let it fester in my heart, while the beauty of Dawn's disposition is that her feelings all come out. She has disgraced herself by making outward demonstration of what many inwardly feel; but understanding what I have put before you, you must not hold the girl responsible ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... religion of the south—as I have observed it and proved it—is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes; the justifier of the most appalling barbarity; a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds; and a secure shelter, under which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal abominations fester and flourish. Were I again to be reduced to the condition of a slave, next to that calamity, I should regard the fact of being the slave of a religious slaveholder, the greatest that could befall me. For all slaveholders ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... boys and girls do not clean their nails every day. Then sometimes a piece of dirt gets in under a nail and causes a sore. But the tiger and tigress are wiser. If part of a piece of meat that they have torn up were to remain under a claw, it would fester and cause a sore. So the tiger and tigress ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle, Book Two • Prince Sarath Ghosh

... welches einerseits befestigt ist, whrend an der andern Seite die Kraft wirkt; die Last ist an der Achse der Rolle aufgehngt. Zur Hebung grsserer Lasten bedient man sich in der Regel[7] einer Verbindung mehrerer fester und loser Rollen, welche ...
— German Science Reader - An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of - Physics, Chemistry and Engineering • Charles F. Kroeh

... That is a part of war, and always was. The loss of friends and comrades may fire the blood. It may lead men to risk their own lives in a desperate charge to get even. But it is a pain that does not rankle and that does not fester like a sore that will not heal. It is the tales the Canadians have to tell of sheer, depraved torture and brutality that has inflamed them to the pitch of hatred that they cherish. It has seemed as if the Germans had a particular grudge ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... the people of this country should move on in a comfortable manner into an easy life, which, with all its ups and downs, is not uncheered by fortune, while the remainder of the people shall be left to rot and fester in the slums of our cities, or wither in the deserted and abandoned ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... of Upper Canada; and lest they should be considered as endeavouring to fulfil their own predictions, they did not publish their letter to Lord John Russell, or write a line on the subject for more than ten years—knowing that a wound so deep would, without any action or word on their part, fester and spread so wide in the people of Upper Canada as ultimately to compel the repeal of the Act or sever their connection with Great Britain. The result was as they, Messrs. Ryerson, had apprehended; for in 1853 the Act was repealed by ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... 180 From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful Vale To visit or bewail thee, or if better, Counsel or Consolation we may bring, Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage The tumors of a troubl'd mind, And are as Balm to fester'd wounds. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... Kessenmas an' a happy New Year, Cleveland Christmas Song A Christmas Wassail Sheffield Mumming Song Charms, "Nominies," and Popular Rhymes Wilful weaste maks weasome want A rollin' stone gethers no moss Than awn a crawin' hen Nowt bud ill-luck 'll fester where Meeat maks The Miller's Thumb Miller, miller, mooter-poke Down i' yon lum we have a mill, Hob-Trush Hob "Hob-Trush Hob, wheer is thoo?" Gin Hob mun hae nowt but a hardin' hamp, Nanny Button-Cap The New Moon A Setterday's mean I see t' mean an' t' mean sees me, New mean, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... away as fast as our guide could persuade our cabman to drive. But the gipsy quarter had another street in reserve which made us sorry to have left the first. It paralleled the river, and into the center of it every manner of offal had been cast from the beginning of time to reek and fester and juicily ripen and rot in unspeakable corruption. It was such a thoroughfare as Dante might have imagined in his Hell, if people in his time had minded such horrors; but as it was we could only realize that it was worse than infernal, it was medieval, and that we were ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... not to provoke. And when, if it please God, this storm shall be over-blown, let me not, by my present behaviour, leave any room for heart-burnings; but, like a skilful surgeon, so heal the wound to the bottom, though the operation be painful, that it may not fester, and break out again with fresh violence, on future misunderstandings, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... grieves day and night. The man of wisdom should never shot them for piercing the vitals of other people. A forest, pierced with shafts or cut down with the axe, grows again. The man, however, that is pierced with words unwisely spoken, becomes the victim of wounds that fester and lead to death.[462] Barbed arrows and Nalikas and broadheaded shafts are capable of being extracted from the body. Wordy shafts, however, are incapable of being extracted, for they lie embedded in the very heart. One should not taunt a person that is defective of a limb or that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... sausages, the crisis came, and went. Contrary to all his expectations, Scott left the table vanquished, his light of hope gone out for ever. It was a meagre consolation that, in thinking back upon the matter afterwards, he could take to himself the credit of having spoken no word which could ever fester ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... understandable, was lamentable because it helped insure that certain inequities in the military community would linger. The failure of Negroes to win skilled job assignments and promotions, for example, would remain to fester and contribute significantly to the bitterness visited upon a surprised Department of Defense in later years. In brief, because the services had become a model of racial equality when judged by contemporary ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... republic. So, the Champs Elysees were surrounded with troops, and the dogs were driven into the Rue Royale and the Place Royale, where they were mowed down by musketry. On that one day the dead carcasses of more than three thousand dogs lay about in the streets of Paris, and there they continued to fester for three days longer, because a dispute had arisen among the city officials as to whose duty it was to remove them. At length the Convention undertook that task, and intrusted the work to representative ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... comedies or tragedies, all bear the mark of his bitter and misanthropic spirit,—a spirit that seemed cursed by the companionship of its own thoughts, and forced them out through a well-grounded fear that they would fester if left within. His comedies of "The Malcontent," "The Fawn," and "What You Will," have no genuine mirth, though an abundance of scornful wit,—of wit which, in his own words, "stings, blisters, galls off the skin, with the acrimony of its sharp ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... debt for tempting George on in that business," thought Lady Bellamy to herself, as she rolled swiftly down the avenue of giant walnuts; "but I think that I have repaid it. The thorn I have planted will fester in his flesh till he dies of the sore. Superstition run wild in his weak mind will make the world a hell for him, and ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... which the refuse is thrown in the intervals between times of removal, rain and surface water will mix with the refuse and hasten its decomposition, and generally the lowest part of the filth will not be removed, but will be left to fester and produce malaria. In all places where the occupation is permanent the following conditions ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... much of this waste is thrown into the dust-bin, there to fester and breed disease. Then there are old newspapers, ragged books, old bottles, tins, canisters, etc. We all know what a number of articles there are which are not quite bad enough to be thrown into the dust heap, and yet are no good to us. We put them on one side, ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... often that the English penetrate into places where no ostentatious celebrity dwells to sate curiosity and flatter pride. My countryman: it is well, and perhaps fortunate. Yes," he said, after a second pause, "yes; it were indeed a boon, had the earth a fountain for the wounds which fester and the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... make his dinner a marvel and a memory. It was indeed a wonderful occasion, and I suppose if I had not been altogether drenched in misery, I should have found the same wild amusement in it that glowed in all the others. There were one or two university dons, Lord George Fester, the racing man, Panmure, the artist, two or three big City men, Weston Massinghay and another prominent Liberal whose name I can't remember, the three men Tarvrille had promised and Esmeer, Lord Wrassleton, Waulsort, the member for ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells



Words linked to "Fester" :   festering, exhaust, maturate, eject, discharge



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com