CANKER, n.
1. A disease incident to trees, which causes the bark to rot and fall.
2. A popular name of certain small eroding ulcers in the mouth, particularly of children. They are generally covered with a whitish slough.
3. A virulent, corroding ulcer or any thing that corrodes, corrupts or destroys.
Sacrilege may prove an eating canker.
And their word will eat as doth a canker. Tim. 2.
4. An eating, corroding, virulent humor corrosion.
5. A kind of rose, the dog rose.
6. In farriery, a running thrush of the worst kind a disease in horses feet, discharging a fetid matter from the cleft in the middle of the frog.
CANKER, To grow corrupt to decay, or waste away by means of any noxious cause to grow rusty, or to be oxydized, as a metal.