Rankle

1. v. t. To cause to fester; to make sore; to inflame.
2. a. To become, or be, rank; to grow rank or strong; to be inflamed; to fester; — used literally and figuratively.
3. a. To produce a festering or inflamed effect; to cause a sore; — used literally and figuratively; as, a splinter rankles in the flesh; the words rankled in his bosom.

The word meanings were obtained from OPTED(The Online Plain Text English Dictionary), which is based on “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” which is in turn based on the 1913 US Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (See Project Gutenburg), as a text file.