Chancre : nm Small ulcer with a tendency to eat away at surrounding parts.
glutton.
To eat like a chancre, with excess.
The expression "Eat / Eat like a chancre": Eating voraciously - Eating excessively.
Chancre is a word that comes from latin cancer and which denotes an ulcer or a tumor. In the past, chancre referred to a small ulcer that overflowed onto the surrounding parts, gnawing at them. Currently, it is rather an ulceration of the skin or certain mucous membranes. But, in botany, it is also a sharp wound in the bark of a tree attacked by a fungus.
In all cases, the chancre is therefore either something which tends to spread by "devouring" what surrounds it or else a large wound or crevice.
Our metaphor, which dates from the XNUMXth century, is therefore easy to understand, the one who eats like a canker devouring or gobbling up all the food having the bad idea of passing within his reach. But it is possible that his birth was also due to a simple distortion of the old comparison. like a cantor (fat as a cantor, drink like a cantor.)
In fact, at the time when there were cantors in churches, to sing during religious ceremonies, they had the reputation, like monks and canons, of having good food, of feasting well, thus justifying the birth of comparison.