corruption

  1. 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; depravity; wickedness; impurity; bribery.
  2. 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.
  3. Noun.  The product of corruption; putrid matter.
  4. Noun.  The decomposition of biological matter.
  5. Noun.  (computing) 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.
  6. Noun.  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. Noun.  (linguistics) A debased or nonstandard form of a word, expression, or text, resulting from misunderstanding, transcription error, mishearing, etc.
  8. Noun.  Something that is evil but is supposed to be good.

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This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.