corruption
/kəˈɹʌpʃən/
Frequency: 4.35 in modern English
Meaning
noun
The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
Unethical administrative or executive practices (in government or business), including bribery (offering or receiving bribes), conflicts of interest, nepotism, embezzlement, and so on.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
The destruction of data by manipulation of parts of it, either by deliberate or accidental human action or by imperfections in storage or transmission media.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A nonstandard form of a word, expression, or text, especially when resulting from misunderstanding, transcription error, or mishearing. (See a usage note about this sense.)
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries, […] to exite popular indignation against them."
- "They abstained from some of the worst methods of corruption usual to their party in its earlier days."
- "But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts."
- "WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets."
- "The inducing and accelerating of putrefaction is a subject of very universal inquiry; for corruption is a reciprocal to generation."
- "Think of wandering amid sepulchral ruins, of stumbling over the bones of the dead, of encountering what I cannot describe,—the horror of being among those who are neither the living or the dead;—those dark and shadowless things that sport themselves with the reliques of the dead, and feast and love amid corruption,—ghastly, mocking, and terrific."
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: French