gangrene
/ˈɡeɪ̯ŋˌɡɹin/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.68 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "If gangrene sets in, we may have to amputate the foot."
- "Women should earn equal wages with men for equal work done. Child marriages and polygamy are a gangrene on society."
- "Vulneration or section sometimes procures a Gangrene, when the vital Principle is so debilitated, or enormous by the would, that instead of a good suppuration and vigorous transmutation, a depraved matter is generated, which corrupts and gangrenes the part: and thus a small cut of a finger or Toe hath gangrened, and killed the person: but in greater Wounds, the danger is greater, as more frequently to happen."
- "An intensely biting frost will gangrene the membrane ; a foggy state of the atmosphere, with low, black, stagnant exhalations, accompanied with sudden, frequent intermissions, interchanges, and oscillations of dryness and moisture, expansion and condensation, will corrupt and putrify both the membrane and the mucous discharge."
- "For where it chances to be successful, it is like the copper shot of the Mexicans, which gangrenes the wound."
- "If a man had a sore leg, and he should go to an honest, judicious chirurgeon, and he should only bid him keep it warm, and anoint it with such an oil, (an oil well known) that would do the cure; haply he would not much regard him, because he knows the medicine, beforehand an ordinary medicine; but if he should go to a surgeon that should tell him, your leg will gangrene within three days, and it must be cut off, and you will die, unless you do something that I could tell you, what listening there would be to this man?"
Etymology
Borrowed from French gangrène, from Latin gangraena, from Ancient Greek γάγγραινα (gángraina, “gangrene”).
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: gangraena, γάγγραινα
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɡeɪ̯ŋˌɡɹin/
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Medicine.