fester

Psychiatric researchers are referring to the confluence of these three characteristics—sycophancy, linguistic alignment and hyperpersonalization—as the “amplification spiral,” suggesting it’s the mechanism by which delusional thinking can fester.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 27, 2026

But it doesn’t get better if we just leave the bubble to fester.

From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2026

She says she does her best to tell him that the system is cruel and wrong, but she doesn’t want the anger to fester.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 14, 2026

Despite this, he's facing a dwindling number of volunteers and donors - a symptom, as he puts it, of a town "left to fester" in economic strife.

From BBC ● Jun. 11, 2026

Her skirt caught the cool evening wind, which tugged her away even fester.

From "Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld

Farmers and herders clash over land in the centre of the country while a simmering separatist movement festers in the southeast.

From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026

By your early 70s, the anxiety festers and grows.

From MarketWatch ● Mar. 26, 2026

With no immediate help from officers, the fear and anxiety festers inside you.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 6, 2025

Given the heavy rainfall and nonporous soil, the waste festers, exposing residents to health risks.

From New York Times ● May 5, 2023

Below us Toronto festers in the evening heat, the trees spreading like worn moss, the lake zinc in the distance.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

But an uneasy tension festered behind the fanfare.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026

McCartney said confusion over the break-up had festered because the band's new manager Allen Klein - with whom he refused to align - said he had needed time to tie up some financial loose ends.

From BBC ● Dec. 2, 2024

Resentment festered in the meantime, as Bush and his peers questioned why the school hadn’t fought harder to defend him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2024

Wilson’s lead is a working-class Black man, a former Negro league superstar whose dreams festered when baseball’s color barrier prevented him from rising into the big leagues.

From Salon ● Sep. 12, 2024

During that first summer and fall of sandy congestion and wind-blown boredom, the bitterness accumulated, the rage festered in hundreds of tarpapered cubicles like ours.

From "Farewell to Manzanar" by Jeanne Houston

As earnings season gets under way, festering worries about artificial-intelligence stocks could be put to bed.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026

But with little progress on the issues festering and so much riding on their relationship, any reprieve could be temporary—and the space for surprises large.

From Barron's ● May 12, 2026

The insanity of investing in a new playground when a dozen festering issues make the park unsafe should be crystal clear to one and all.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2026

At a recent meeting of Save Our Domes, a local environmental group, a member described the proposed mines as “equivalent to a huge festering boil on the face of a family member.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 8, 2025

The massacres had happened over two hundred years ago, but the wound they’d made in our cultural history was left raw and festering, like a fault line that may begin trembling again at any moment.

From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros