mormal

plural mormals · alternative morimal · alternative mortmal

1. obsoleteA bad sore; a cancer or gangrene.

   The blood feud was old and a mormal between our Families. It undermined cooperation that has since proved very profitable.

   2013, Harvey Beach, Blood and Land, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 23

   2 more examples

   [Y]e wyll cauſe to be choſen Cenſores or correctours of maners, […] Who lyke good ſurgeons, ſhall not forbeare with corroſiue and ſharpe medicines, to drawe out the feſtred and ſtinkyng cores of olde marmolles and inueterate ſores of the weale publike, ingendred by the longe cuſtome in vice.

   1541, [Aelius Lampridius], “The Oracion of Alexander to the Senate”, in Thomas Elyote [i.e., Thomas Elyot], transl., The Image of Gouernaunce Complied of the Actes and Sentences Notable, of the Most Noble Emperour Alexander Seuerus, […], [London]: […] Thomas Berthelett, published 1549, →OCLC, folios 31, recto – 31, verso

   They built their cathedrals, carved their Gothic philosophy into a million intricacies, sang their love-songs, rang their bells, danced and laughed in spite of all the buboes and mormals, the agues and mortal sweats, in spite of stink and worm-eaten flesh and all the inconceivable cruelties of unconquered nature.

   2007, Aldous Huxley, “A Country Walk”, in Jerome Meckier, Bernfried Nugel, editors, Aldous Huxley Annual: A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond, volume 7, Lit Verlag, →ISBN, page 37