festered

verb

past tense of fester
as in decomposed
to go through decomposition a week after the battle the corpses of the fallen were still festering in the fields

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of festered In response to angry, sometimes mocking, questions from Republican senators, Fauci declined to answer more than 100 times, injecting new drama into partisan divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the pandemic. — Lauran Neergaard, Fortune, 29 July 2026 Forest, who had qualified for the Conference League, took their place, and resentment has festered. — Daniel Taylor, New York Times, 1 July 2026 As the police department’s ranks shrank, crime festered, both aboveground and below. — Kevin Lozano, Harpers Magazine, 2 June 2026 The bad blood that had festered between the two competitors came to a boiling point. — Ryan Gaydos, FOXNews.com, 11 May 2026 For years, this debate between stricter codes and affordable housing festered behind the scenes, including at the obscure International Code Council, which brings together government officials, contractors, appliance makers and others to lay the groundwork for model codes. — The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 30 Mar. 2026 The controversy stretches back years, but festered under ex-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was in office from 2018-2024. — ABC News, 27 Mar. 2026 Here, according to the MAGA universe, festered the deep state. — David Blumenthal, STAT, 24 Mar. 2026 And, yet, concerns festered all the same. — Noah Furtado, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Feb. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for festered
  1. decomposed
  2. disintegrated
  3. rotted
  4. decayed
Verb
  • Its recruit and redeploy stages require roles decomposed into explicit tasks—making what AI can augment answerable task by task.
    — Manu Khetan, Forbes.com, 29 July 2026
  • Her arms and legs had been cut off and her body had significantly decomposed.
    — Steven J. Horowitz, Variety, 27 July 2026
Definition of decomposed
Verb
  • The breakaway Super League succumbed to the pressure and disintegrated quickly, with nine of its founding members withdrawing in a matter of days.
    — Justin Birnbaum, Sportico.com, 30 July 2026
  • Flights in early 2025, though, ended in a series of failures including two in which the Starship upper stage disintegrated in a fiery cascade of debris across the skies visible from Florida and the Caribbean.
    — Richard Tribou, The Orlando Sentinel, 16 July 2026
Definition of disintegrated
Verb
  • The missing 14-year-old’s body rotted for weeks until it was found in the trunk of a Tesla at a Hollywood tow yard last September, severed at the limbs and stuffed into black plastic bags, according to medical examiner’s records and court filings.
    — Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times, 21 July 2026
  • While the timber has long since rotted away, the posts lined up to point directly at the rising sun during the summer solstice and the setting sun at the winter solstice — in the same way as Stonehenge.
    — Elmira Aliieva, NBC news, 18 June 2026
Definition of rotted
Verb
  • In order to have aqueous alteration there needs to be some internal heating [usually via radioactive elements] and if something forms later than everything else then there will be less heat [since many of the radioactive elements will have already decayed].
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 19 June 2026
  • But since sitting vacant, the property has decayed and listed in city property records as unoccupiable.
    — Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez, Charlotte Observer, 18 May 2026
Definition of decayed

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fester
festered
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Cite this Entry

“Festered.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/festered. Accessed 4 Aug. 2026.

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Nglish: Translation of festered for Spanish Speakers

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