- rank#
- rank adj 1 Rank, rampant mean growing or increasing at an immoderate rate.Rank applies primarily to vegetation and implies vigorous, luxuriant, and often unchecked or excessive growth{
behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good— Gen 41:5
}{its garden was . . . rank, too thickly crowded with trees and bushes and plants— West
}The term is common in metaphoric extension{weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them— Shak.
}Rampant is more widely applicable than rank; it implies rapid, often unrestrained or wild, spreading and is frequently applicable not only to what literally grows but to what extends or increases by contagion or diffusion{it grieved him to see ignorance and impiety so rampant— Fuller d. 1661
}{that curiosity which is so rampant, as a rule, in an Indian village— Kipling
}{rumor ran rampant ... the other day— Breit
}2 fusty, musty, rancid, *malodorous, stinking, fetid, noisome, putridAnalogous words: dank, humid (see WET): *offensive, loathsome, repulsive: decomposed, decayed, spoiled (see DECAY)Antonyms: balmy3 *flagrant, glaring, grossAnalogous words: conspicuous, outstanding, *noticeable: foul, filthy, squalid, nasty (see DIRTY): *outrageous, heinous, atrocious, monstrousrank n *line, row, file, echelon, tierrank vb *class, grade, rate, graduate, gradate
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.