Adjacent Words

Corruption definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

CORRUPTION, n. [L.]
1. The act of corrupting, or state of being corrupt or putrid; the destruction of the natural form of bodies, by the separation of the component parts, or by disorganization, in the process of putrefaction.
Thou wilt not suffer thy holy One to see corruption. Psalms 16.
2. Putrid matter; pus.
3. Putrescence; a foul state occasioned by putrefaction.
4. Depravity; wickedness; perversion or deterioration of moral principles; loss of purity or integrity.
Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2 Peter 1.
Corruption in elections is the great enemy of freedom.
5. Debasement; taint; or tendency to a worse state.
Keep my honor from corruption.
6. Impurity; depravation; debasement; as a corruption of language.
7. Bribery. He obtained his suit by corruption.
8. In law, taint; impurity of blood, in consequence of an act of attainder of treason or felony, by which a person is disabled to inherit lands from an ancestor, nor can retain those in his possession, nor transmit them by descent to his heirs.
Corruption of blood can be removed only by act of parliament.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: lack of integrity or honesty (especially susceptibility to bribery); use of a position of trust for dishonest gain [syn: corruptness, corruption] [ant: incorruption, incorruptness]
2: in a state of progressive putrefaction [syn: putrescence, putridness, rottenness, corruption]
3: decay of matter (as by rot or oxidation)
4: moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles; "the luxury and corruption among the upper classes"; "moral degeneracy followed intellectual degeneration"; "its brothels, its opium parlors, its depravity"; "Rome had fallen into moral putrefaction" [syn: corruption, degeneracy, depravation, depravity, putrefaction]
5: destroying someone's (or some group's) honesty or loyalty; undermining moral integrity; "corruption of a minor"; "the big city's subversion of rural innocence" [syn: corruption, subversion]
6: inducement (as of a public official) by improper means (as bribery) to violate duty (as by commiting a felony); "he was held on charges of corruption and racketeering"

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 14th century 1. a. impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle ; depravity b. decay, decomposition c. inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d. a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct 2. archaic an agency or influence that corrupts 3. chiefly dialect pus

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 moral deterioration, esp. widespread. 2 use of corrupt practices, esp. bribery or fraud. 3 a irregular alteration (of a text, language, etc.) from its original state. b an irregularly altered form of a word. 4 decomposition, esp. of a corpse or other organic matter. Etymology: ME f. OF corruption or L corruptio (as CORRUPT)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Corruption Cor*rup"tion (k?r-r?p"sh?n), n. [F. corruption, L. corruptio.] 1. The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration. The inducing and accelerating of putrefaction is a subject of very universal inquiry; for corruption is a reciprocal to ``generation''. --Bacon. 2. The product of corruption; putrid matter. 3. 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. --Hallam. They abstained from some of the worst methods of corruption usual to their party in its earlier days. --Bancroft. Note: Corruption, when applied to officers, trustees, etc., signifies the inducing a violation of duty by means of pecuniary considerations. --Abbott. 4. 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. Corruption of blood (Law), taint or impurity of blood, in consequence of an act of attainder of treason or felony, by which a person is disabled from inheriting any estate or from transmitting it to others. Corruption of blood can be removed only by act of Parliament. --Blackstone. Syn: Putrescence; putrefaction; defilement; contamination; deprivation; debasement; adulteration; depravity; taint. See Depravity.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. Corruption is dishonesty and illegal behaviour by people in positions of authority or power. Distribution of food throughout the country is being hampered by inefficiency and corruption.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia

ko-rup'-shun: The Hebrew words mishchath, mashchath, mashchith, and their Greek equivalents, phthora, and diaphthora, with numerous derivatives and cognate verbs, imply primarily physical degeneration and decay (Job 17:14; Ac 2:27, etc.). The term shachath, which the King James Version translates with "corruption" in Jon 2:6, ought to be rendered "pit,". as in Ps 30:9; 35:7 et passim, while shachath beli in Isa 38:17 means the "pit of nothingness," i.e. of destruction.

Figurative: At an early time we find the above-given words in a non-literal sense denoting moral depravity and corruption (Ge 6:11; Ex 32:7; Ho 9:9; Ga 6:8, etc.), which ends in utter moral ruin and hopelessness, the second death. The question has been raised whether the meaning of these words might be extended so as to include the idea of final destruction and annihilation of the spirit. Upon careful examination, however, this question must be denied both from the standpoint of the Old Testament and of the New Testament. Apart from other considerations we see this from the metaphors used in the Scriptures to illustrate the condition of "corruption," such as the "unquenchable fire," the "worm" which "dieth not" (Mr 9:43,18; compare Isa 66:24), and "sleep" (Da 12:2), where a careful distinction is made between the blissful state after death of the righteous and the everlasting disgrace of the godless. The later Jewish theology is also fully agreed on this point. The meaning of the words cannot therefore extend beyond the idea of utter moral degradation and depravity.

H. L. E. Luering

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Putrefaction, putrescence. 2. Defilement, contamination, pollution, infection, vitiation, adulteration, debasement. 3. Depravity, depravation, wickedness, demoralization, immorality, laxity, looseness of morals, want of principle. 4. Bribery, dishonesty, abuse of public trusts.

Moby Thesaurus

abandon, abandonment, abjection, abomination, abuse of terms, acrostic, adulteration, alienation, amphibologism, amphiboly, anagram, antiphrasis, atrocity, bad, bane, barbarism, bastardizing, befouling, befoulment, biodegradability, biodegradation, blight, brainwashing, breakup, bribery, bribery and corruption, bribing, cacoepy, cacology, calembour, carrion, college of Laputa, colloquialism, contamination, corrosion, corruptedness, corruptness, counterindoctrination, criminality, crookedness, crying evil, cutting, damage, dandruff, debasement, decadence, decadency, decay, decomposition, defilement, degeneracy, degenerateness, degeneration, degradability, degradation, demoralization, depravation, depravedness, depravity, despoliation, destruction, detriment, deviousness, dilapidation, dilution, dishonesty, dishonor, disintegration, disorganization, dissoluteness, dissolution, doctoring, envenoming, equivocality, equivoque, evasiveness, evil, excrement, false coloring, feloniousness, festering, filth, fortifying, foul matter, fouling, fraudulence, fraudulency, furfur, gammacism, gangrene, graft, grievance, harm, havoc, hurt, ill, improbity, impropriety, indirection, indoctrination, infection, infelicity, injury, jeu de mots, lacing, lambdacism, localism, logogram, logogriph, malapropism, mess, metagram, mildew, mischief, misconstruction, misdirection, misguidance, misinformation, misinstruction, misinterpretation, misknowledge, misleading, mispronunciation, misrepresentation, missaying, misspeaking, misteaching, misusage, misuse, mold, moral pollution, moral turpitude, muck, mucus, mystification, mytacism, obfuscation, obscenity, obscurantism, obscuration, ordure, outrage, oxidation, oxidization, palindrome, paralambdacism, pararhotacism, paronomasia, perversion, play on words, poison, poisoning, pollution, profligacy, prostitution, pun, punning, pus, putrid matter, reindoctrination, reprobacy, resolution, rhotacism, rot, rottenness, rust, scurf, scuz, shadiness, shiftiness, slang, slanting, slime, slipperiness, smut, snot, solecism, sophistry, sordes, spiking, spoilage, spoonerism, straining, subornation, subversion, suppuration, taboo word, the worst, torturing, toxin, trickiness, turpitude, unconscientiousness, underhandedness, ungrammaticism, unsavoriness, unscrupulousness, unstraightforwardness, venom, vexation, vitiation, vulgarism, watering, woe, wordplay, wrong