From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishrankleran‧kle /ˈræŋkəl/ verb [intransitive, transitive] UPSETif something rankles, you still remember it angrily because it upset you or annoyed you a lot His comments still rankled.→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
rankle• Greg's jibe about the dress being like a shroud rankled.• But Tasini was never paid extra for the electronic rights to his writing and this rankled him.• His casual style of dress rankled his superiors.• Suggestions of inferiority have long rankled in a city where image has been an obsession for more than a century.• Although such incidents rankled, the cutter crews' sense of humour soon surfaced to erase the bad memories.• The implications of this remark rankled with us deeply.Origin rankle (1300-1400) Old French draoncler, raoncler, from draoncle, raoncle “sore place”, from Latin dracunculus, from draco “dragon” 