Also 7–8 shanker, chanker, 8 shancre. [a. F. chancre cancer, also venereal ulcer:—L. cancer crab. Cf. CANCER, CANKER.] An ulcer occurring in venereal diseases.
a. 1605. Montgomerie, Flyting, 308. The chaud-peece, the chanker.
1657. Colvil, Whigs Supplic. (1751), 50. When … They first brought Shankers ov’r the alps.
1789. W. Buchan, Dom. Med. (1790), 507. Symptomatic chancres are commonly accompanied with ulcers in the throat.
1872. Cohen, Dis. Throat, 113. Chancres about the lips, tongue, and hard palate, produced by actual contact.
1881. Syd. Soc. Lex., According to most modern authorities, this soft chancre or local contagious ulcer … is not a syphilitic, although a venereal, disease, the Hunterian or hard chancre being the local manifestation of syphilis.
Hence Chancred a.
1708. Motteux, Rabelais (1737), V. 217. Shanker’d, colliflower’d … Martyrs and Confessors of Venus.
