corruption

/kəˈrʌpʃən/
noun
  1. Dishonest or illegal behavior, especially by people in positions of power, such as accepting bribes.
    • Many countries have strict laws to fight political corruption.
    • The mayor was arrested on charges of corruption after taking money from contractors.
    • Corruption in the police department made it impossible to get a fair investigation.
  2. The act of making something morally bad or the state of being morally bad.
    • The corruption of the young prince by his greedy advisors was a tragedy.
    • Some people believe that wealth leads to moral corruption.
    • The novel explores the gradual corruption of an honest man by power.
  3. Damage or changes made to data, files, or computer systems that make them unusable or incorrect.
    • Always back up your work to prevent corruption from power outages.
    • Data corruption during the transfer made the image look like static.
    • A virus caused the corruption of all the files on my hard drive.
  4. A changed form of a word or phrase, especially one that has become standard through error or misuse.
    • Some dialects contain corruptions of older English words.
    • The name 'Cairo' in Illinois is a corruption of the original Native American name.
    • The word 'okay' may be a corruption of the Choctaw phrase 'okeh'.
What does "corruption" mean? | whatsthatwordmean | whatsthatwordmean