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.

Synonyms

• (act of corrupting or making putrid): adulteration, contamination, debasement, defilement, dirtying, soiling, tainting
• (state of being corrupt or putrid): decay, decomposition, deterioration, putrefaction, rotting
• (product of corruption; putrid matter): decay, putrescence, rot
• (act of impairing integrity, virtue or moral principle):
• (state of being corrupted or debased): debasement, depravity, evil, impurity, sinfulness, wickedness
• (bribery): bribery
• (act of changing for the worse): deterioration, worsening
• (act of being changed for the worse): destroying, ruining, spoiling
• (departure from what is pure or correct): deterioration, erosion
• (word adopted from another language whose spelling has been changed):

Derived terms

• corruption of blood

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.

Corruption may refer to:

• Putrefaction, the decomposition of recently-living bio-matter. Other meanings of the term use this as a metaphor.
• Political corruption, the dysfunction of a political system or institution in which government officials, political officials or employees seek illegitimate personal gain through actions such as bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement.
  • Political corruption is a specific form of rent seeking (not to be confused with property rental), where access to politics is restricted by limited transparency, limited competition and domination of narrow interests.
  • Political corruption tends to be more extensive in developing countries, where safeguards such as a well-paid, merit-based civil service, investigative journalism, and other accountability mechanisms aren't well developed.
• Corporate corruption, the abuse of power by corporate managers against shareholders or consumers.
• Data corruption, an unintended change to data in storage or in transit.
• Linguistic corruption, the change in meaning to a language or a text introduced by cumulative errors in transcription as changes in the language speakers' comprehension.
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, a Wii game

Categories: Deception