Friday Word: Carbuncle

[med_cat]

Today is December 27th :)

"I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season." is the opening sentence of "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

So--wishing you all compliments of the season--whatever the season means to each of you--and here's the word, from Merriam-Webster:


carbuncle
noun
car·​bun·​cle ˈkär-ˌbəŋ-kəl

1a
obsolete : any of several red precious stones

b: the garnet cut cabochon

2: a painful local purulent inflammation of the skin and deeper tissues with multiple openings for the discharge of pus and usually necrosis and sloughing of dead tissue


Recent Examples on the Web

Examples of bacterial infections are boils, eyelid styes, carbuncles, nail infections, and hair follicle infections.
— Elizabeth Woolley, Verywell Health, 15 Apr. 2024

So, what will remain sitting there is an ugly carbuncle.
— Brian T. Allen, National Review, 23 Dec. 2023

But others, notably Staphylococcus aureus, cause a range of diseases, from pus-producing boils, carbuncles, and abscesses to food poisoning, osteomyelitis, and toxic shock syndrome.
—Mark Caldwell, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019

The solid gold frame is set with an assortment of dazzling gemstones, including 345 aquamarines, 37 white topaz, 27 tourmalines, 12 rubies, seven amethysts, six sapphires, two jargoons, one garnet, one spinel, and one carbuncle.
— Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, 11 Apr. 2023

It’s been that way since the late 1960s, but if Kaktovik ain’t pretty, then Prudhoe—North America’s largest oil field—is a carbuncle in the permafrost.
— Jamie Lafferty, National Geographic, 29 Dec. 2021

The drama, in their view, is nothing less than a monstrous carbuncle on the face of British society.
— Meredith Blakestaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 8 Nov. 2022

But all that was knocked down half a century ago, to be replaced by a concrete carbuncle that destroyed the arch and chunks of nearby streets and has been making commuters miserable since 1968.
— The Economist, 8 Feb. 2020

This isn't Westeros; no one's out here massing troops on opposite sides of a meadow while the fat cats in the biggest tent play an oversized game of Risk and tend to their carbuncles.
—Peter Rubin, WIRED, 20 Aug. 2019


Etymology

Middle English, from Anglo-French charbucle, carbuncule, from Latin carbunculus small coal, carbuncle, diminutive of carbon-, carbo charcoal, ember

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a