Word: cankery Part of Speech: adj Etymology: From canker + -y. 1. Full of canker (plant disease); diseased and decaying. Example: Mix fresh cow-dung with urine and soap-suds, and with this mixture, was over the sems and branches of the trees, as a white-washer would wash the ceiling or walls of a room; taking care to cut off all the cankery parts , and to scrape off all the moss , before you lay the mixture on. In the course of the Spring or Summer you will fee a fine new bark coming on. When the old bark is cankery, you must pare is off with a draw-knife, or such a long knife as I have had made on purpose, especially for wall-trees; where the draw-knife cannot be applied next the wall. Example: In the pruning of standards give only occasional pruning, to reform or remove any casual irregularity from cross-placed or very crowded branches; and take away all cankery and decayed wood . 2. Marked by cankers; ulcerous. Example: It is powerfully effecacious in the cleansing and arresting the progress of cankery affections of every kind, and removing all local foulness from any part . Example: A Child of Mr Joshua Fales, aged 6 1/2 years of a cankery Disorder . 3. Rusty; corroded. Example: The water in this pit varied from two inches to a foot in depth, and in some places it had stood so many years that it was cankery, or corroded, and working in it barefooted, it would eat the skin off between my toes, making it very painful. Example: The third is of St. James, who saith to covetous rich men after this manner: 'Weep and howl, ye rich men, for the misery that shall come upon you: your riches do rot, your clothes be motheated, your gold and silver wax cankery and rusty, and their rust shall bear witness against you, and consume you like fire: you make a hoard and treasure of God's indignation at the last day." 4. Corrosive. Example: And awful things happen to people who break their promises, things that make their insides turn green and cankery . · Example: But in the back o' his head the devil would prod an' the cankery cravin ' would eat deeper. 5. Metallic or bitter. Example: Lastly, there was the 'cankery' taste of the mouth; the 'metallic' taste of the boy; the watery state of the mouth and lips in each; the teasing, hacking, dry cough, common to all, and affecting the children, particularly towards the last. Example: He came from Sea in the Year 1727, or the Beginning of the Year 1728, after which he made a Visit or two to his Friends in Surry in one of which, his mother having prepar'd a Pot of Sage Tea for her own drinking; but the Father, unhappily for him (tho' he had hardly ever been known to drink Tea) took a large Draught of it, and the Moment after he had so done declar'd he was poison'd , the Taste thereof being nafty and cankery, and worse than any Mineral Water, or Water wherein old Iron had been steep'd for some Time; 6. Surly; cantankerous. Example: Every body kens, Miss Mizy, that thou's a cankery creature , and that had thou no been sae, I might hae been quit o' thee lang syne; but nae fool cast up that would be fashed wi' thee. Example: "He was always one of them cankery chiels as never have a kindly word for man nor beast , " said the landlord . 7. Characteristic of canker (disease of a horse's foot, characterized by separation of the horny portion and the development of fungoid growths) Example: Pares from their feet the cankery rot.