How to Use fester in a Sentence

fester

1 of 2 verb
Definition of festernext
Synonyms for festernext
  • We should deal with these problems now instead of allowing them to fester.
  • His feelings of resentment have festered for years.
  • His wounds festered for days before he got medical attention.
  • Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.
    — Sarah Yang, Sunset Magazine, 7 Feb. 2024
  • Nearly 10% of the bulls died, their corpses thrown overboard or left to fester in the pens among the living.
    — Kevin Varley, Fortune, 8 July 2021
  • But that leaves the rest of the issues between them beyond the seas to continue to fester.
    — Jon Gambrell, Anchorage Daily News, 1 Aug. 2023
  • In the tower, Mahito learns that some forms of care can be like putting a Band-Aid over a festering wound.
    — Moeko Fujii, The New Yorker, 2 May 2024
  • It’s a poison running through … our body politic and it’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes.
    — Robin Givhan, Washington Post, 17 May 2022
  • Hate only needs a snippet of daylight to fester and spread.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 May 2022
  • Yemen’s conflict has been festering for more than a decade.
    — Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN, 23 July 2023
  • But the fringe is where ideas can fester and become dangerous.
    — Stephanie Halmhofer, Discover Magazine, 14 Oct. 2021
  • The temperatures rose to triple digits, as the water that would not recede festered in the sun.
    — Annie Gowen, Niko Kommenda and Saiyna Bashir, Anchorage Daily News, 5 Sep. 2023
  • By that point, many of the issues that would cause its demise had already begun festering.
    — Jeanna Smialek, New York Times, 31 Mar. 2023
  • And yet, as Faulkner wrote, the past is never past, which means the incident must fester for Twyla and Roberta both.
    — David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times, 17 Feb. 2022
  • Stones have been left unturned, under which the real wormy rot at the center of the SBC continues to fester.
    — Audrey Clare Farley, The New Republic, 30 May 2022
  • There’s a fair amount of body horror here, beginning with a bee-stung hand that continues to fester and flake.
    — Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 27 Aug. 2021
  • The festering issue has spurred three wars between the countries.
    — Rhea Mogul, CNN, 12 Oct. 2023
  • This gap and others allow contaminants to fester in schools across the state.
    — Lulu Ramadan, ProPublica, 14 Mar. 2022
  • The flighting on the Lebanon-Israel border has also re-opened long festering issues over the frontier, known as the blue line.
    — CNN, 13 Apr. 2024
  • Now in 2023, after the problems have festered for years, Beijing seems unable to muster a forceful enough program to deal with the matter.
    — Milton Ezrati, Forbes, 19 Feb. 2024
  • If trust can’t be re-established, this sore spot will fester long after Thomas leaves office in June.
    — Dallas News, 11 Nov. 2022
  • Hate can quickly fester and grow, and even one incident can be a warning sign of a larger problem.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 Feb. 2022
  • Records show problems have been festering at the facility, also called the JDF, since at least last year.
    — Gina Kaufman, Detroit Free Press, 28 Oct. 2022
  • But The Humans draws its most potent tension from the way that each of the Blakes tries to suppress their dread, leaving it to fester and then emerge in cruel behavior.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 1 Dec. 2021
  • When a team’s brightest star is frustrated and upset, that’s a problem that will either fester or get healed.
    — Gordon Monson, The Salt Lake Tribune, 25 May 2021
  • These theories fester and then seep into the mainstream.
    — New York Times, 20 Mar. 2022
  • In the film’s most remarkable set piece, shot in the town hall in a single, 17-minute take, all of the community’s festering rages and resentments come through.
    — Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor, 27 Apr. 2023
  • Letting these feelings build up and fester can quickly lead to burnout and, in the worst cases, resignation.
    — Steven Salaets, Forbes, 9 Aug. 2022
  • Without those, even simple injuries can fester and the limb may need to be amputated.
    — Mithil Aggarwal, NBC News, 18 Jan. 2024
  • Then again, maybe nothing changes, and this entire mess might just continue to fester into a needless grudge match.
    — Bob McManaman, The Arizona Republic, 19 Sep. 2021
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fester

2 of 2 noun
  • New Yorkers will be asked to place trash on the curb later to reduce the amount of time that mountains of trash fester on the streets.
    — Jeffery C. Mays, New York Times, 17 Oct. 2022
  • These would normally be cleared up face-to-face, but during lockdowns are left to fester.
    — William A. Haseltine, Forbes, 31 Aug. 2021
  • One of the first rules of crisis management is to rip the bandage off immediately rather than let a wound fester.
    — Josef Adalian, Vulture, 26 Aug. 2021
  • Instead, white voices rise to the top, and regressive beliefs fester.
    — Jasper Craven, The New Republic, 28 Aug. 2020
  • There was little food or hygiene, and no way to change patients’ bandages, allowing wounds to fester.
    — Loay Ayyoub, Washington Post, 18 Nov. 2023
  • Nobody should be fooled by the mirage of the Abraham Accords thriving while the Palestinian issue festers.
    — Michael Barnett, Foreign Affairs, 14 Apr. 2023
  • Denial has allowed the fiscal problems before us to fester like a cancer.
    — Mike Pence, National Review, 9 Mar. 2023
  • That’s what the Trojan brass get for allowing that situation to fester.
    — Chris Hays, orlandosentinel.com, 1 Oct. 2021
  • Certain market failures that have been left to fester for years were suddenly exposed.
    — Joe Weisenthal, Bloomberg.com, 4 May 2023
  • But behind this immediate result lurked structural problems that the bankers had left to fester.
    — Adam Rowe, WSJ, 12 Aug. 2022
  • The Big Ten should have been more clear and vocal publicly on its Feb. 26 decision instead of allowing the possibility of a rule change to fester.
    — Shannon Ryan, chicagotribune.com, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Rage or jealousy or terror in and of themselves aren’t enough to drive a person to drastic behavior — there needs to be a foundation in someone for those emotions to take root and fester and warp.
    — Los Angeles Times Staff, Los Angeles Times, 28 Apr. 2023
  • But that game of legislative catchup can't fix fundamental health issues related to 9/11 and left to fester.
    — Sy Mukherjee, Fortune, 9 Sep. 2021
  • If the government lets the crisis fester—with more developers failing and unable to finish their projects—that amount could more than double.
    — Jacky Wong, WSJ, 16 Sep. 2022
  • When problems are left to fester, employees see it and become resentful.
    — Johnny C. Taylor Jr., USA TODAY, 24 Nov. 2021
  • Carotenemia is basically harmless, but leaving a tumor to fester in the colon isn’t.
    — Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, The New Republic, 28 Feb. 2023
  • The buildup of bacteria from sweat and body oils creates a ripe environment for odors to fester, resulting in an unpleasant tang that's hard to eliminate.
    — Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 11 Apr. 2023
  • But the Kagame regime, made up of many former guerrillas of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, knows from experience the dangers of letting a rebel movement fester along its borders.
    — New York Times, 2 Mar. 2021
  • Some artists may have let enduring resentment fester due to being overshadowed by their best mate, but Ridgeley defied the potential ego.
    — Vulture, 31 July 2023
  • Those on both the political right and left have generated the conditions allowing such feelings to fester.
    — Rick Wartzman, Fortune, 14 Dec. 2023
  • Harbaugh has to be careful not to let this situation fester because Peters is respected in the locker room and can influence young players.
    — Baltimore Sun, 5 Oct. 2022
  • Would an accountable person let this type of experience fester?
    — William Arruda, Forbes, 26 May 2022
  • All that time, Putin allowed the feud between the two fiefs to fester without much intervention, something analysts correctly predicted to be a ticking bomb.
    — Mary Ilyushina, Anchorage Daily News, 26 June 2023
  • That conclusion offers up important lessons, not just about dyslexia itself, but about the cost to society of letting any inequality fester.
    — Kira Bindrim, Quartz, 16 May 2022
  • There is no camaraderie, little conversation, and grudges fester.
    — Amber Medland, The New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2022
  • Allowing mold to fester can pose significant health hazards.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 11 July 2021
  • Rivas, a Democrat from Hollister, vowed to usher in a new era of unity following a period in which Democrats were bitterly divided over the Assembly leadership, causing a sense of chaos to fester in the lower house.
    — Laurel Rosenhall, Los Angeles Times, 30 June 2023
  • Unless people confront differences of opinion and work them out intentionally, the root causes of conflict fester, ready to bring grief in moments of stress when cooperation is most needed.
    — Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 27 June 2022
  • Unfortunately, the broad acceptance of just-better-than-average AVs may be undermined by a host of psychological biases that fester in the minds of consumers.
    — Iyad Rahwan, WSJ, 6 Apr. 2021
  • Conspiracy theories about his family fester in dark corners of the internet.
    — Mark Guarino, Washington Post, 13 Aug. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fester.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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