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corruption

Pronunciation: /kəˈɹʌpʃən/

The English word “corruption” has 9 meanings listed here.

noun

  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.
  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. Unethical administrative or executive practices (in government or business), including bribery (offering or receiving bribes), conflicts of interest, nepotism, embezzlement, and so on.
  6. 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.
  7. The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct.
  8. 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.)
  9. Something originally good or pure that has turned evil or impure; a perversion.

Etymology

Borrowed from French corruption, from Latin corruptiō, equivalent to corrupt + -ion.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.