fester

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“
The longer we allow these problems to fester, the easier it becomes for white America to see all blacks as menacing and for black America to see all whites as racist.

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Definitions (20)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (7)

  1. intransitive verb To generate pus; suppurate.
  2. intransitive verb To form an ulcer.
  3. intransitive verb To undergo decay; rot.
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Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (8)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

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Examples (38)

  • She'd had five years to let it fester, and protecting Edward wasn't reason enough to remain silent He half stood, then lurched as his bad foot set wrong. —  AHMM, April 2002
  • Leaving Afghanistan to fester, and intervening only with military strikes whenever a group arises there which is not to our liking, is precisely the approach which led to the problem in the first place. —  Matthew Yglesias
  • Just a quick tidbit; snoring is not something you want to let fester, as it only tends to get more pronounced the longer you let it last for. —  Find Free Articles - ArticlesBase
  • Even as the Iraq quagmire continues to fester, they are planning an even greater war with Iran which will inevitably lead to massive retaliation from the Muslim world, (as many of us Mid-East experts warned at the start of Desert Storm in 1990), and imperil even American democracy at home. —  California Literary Review
  • The film fails to explain why secrets are allowed to fester, and as a result the themes of German guilt and of how sins of one generation are visited upon the next get lost in the flashback shuffle.
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Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English festren, from festre, fistula, from Old French, from Latin fistula.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. Early modern English also feaster; from Middle English fester, festyr, from Old French festre (also in variously corrupted forms, feste, feske, fesque, flestre, flette, fautre, flautre), earlier flstle, = Spanish fistola = Portuguese fistula = Italian fistola, from Latin fistula, a sort of ulcer, fistula: see fistula, of which fester is simply another form derived through the Old French The same terminal change (L. -tula, later Old French F. -tre, later English -ter) appears also in chapter, chapiter, and (in the French forms) apostle, epistle. In previous dictionaries the etymology of fester has been erroneously given, the most common explanation being based upon the verb, which is assumed to be a variant of foster: a fester being regarded, in this view, as a ‘nourished,’ fed, and hence ‘matured’ boil or tumor.
  2. Early modern English also feaster; from Middle English festren, feestren, from Old French festrir, ulcerate, gangrene, fester, from festre, an ulcer, fester: see fester, n.
  3. English dial., also vester, a corruption, through festure, of festue, q. v.
 

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/ˈfɛstər/
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