corruption

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[edit] English

[edit] Etymology

From French corruption, from Latin corruptio

[edit] Noun

Singular
corruption

Plural
countable and uncountable; plural corruptions

corruption (countable and uncountable; plural corruptions)

  1. The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity; depravity; wickedness; impurity; bribery.
    It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries, . . . to exite popular indignation against them.Henry Hallam The Constitutional History of England
    They abstained from some of the worst methods of corruption usual to their party in its earlier days.Bancroft
    • Usage note: Corruption, when applied to officers, trustees, etc., signifies the inducing a violation of duty by means of pecuniary considerations. — Abbott
  2. The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration.
  3. The product of corruption; putrid matter.
  4. The decomposition of biological matter.
  5. (computing) The destruction of data by manipulation of parts of it, usually a result of imperfections in storage or transmission media which randomly alter parts of the data.
  6. The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct; as, a corruption of style; corruption in language.
  7. (linguistics) A word that has adopted from another language but whose spelling has been changed through misunderstanding, transcription error, mishearing, etc.
  8. Something that is evil but is supposed to be good.
    The inducing and accelerating of putrefaction is a subject of very universal inquiry; for corruption is a reciprocal to generation.Francis Bacon.
  9. Parts of a machine can be corrupted, meaning broken.

[edit] Synonyms

[edit] Derived terms

Part or all of this page has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.


[edit] French

[edit] Noun

corruption f. (plural corruptions)

  1. corruption

[edit] Related terms

[edit] Anagrams