Meaning & use
corruption
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Meanings
noununcountable
Dishonest or illegal behavior by people with power, such as accepting bribes or misusing public money.
Grammar: Usually uncountable: corruption is widespread, not a corruption.
Patterns
- corruption in something
- corruption of an official
Voters were angry about corruption in the city government.
The inquiry uncovered corruption at the highest level of the police.
Journalists were jailed for reporting on corruption.
noununcountablecomputing
Damage to data or a file that makes it unreadable or wrong.
Grammar: Used in computing: data corruption.
Patterns
- corruption of a file
A power cut caused corruption of the database.
The photo showed signs of corruption and would not open.
Regular backups protect you from data corruption.
noununcountableformal
The process of making someone or something morally worse or of spoiling its original form.
Grammar: Often followed by of: the corruption of youth.
Patterns
- the corruption of something
Critics warned of the corruption of young minds by violent games.
The word is a corruption of an older Latin phrase.
He blamed money for the corruption of the sport.
Common combinations
- widespread corruption
- Widespread corruption drove investors away.
- root out corruption
- The new mayor promised to root out corruption.
- allegations of corruption
- Allegations of corruption forced the minister to resign.
- political corruption
- Political corruption weakens trust in elections.
- fight corruption
- Activists work to fight corruption in public contracts.
Synonyms and how they differ
- bribery
- Bribery is narrower, referring only to paying or accepting money for favors, while corruption covers many abuses of power.
- graft
- Graft is informal and mainly American, describing illegal gain through political position.
- dishonesty
- Dishonesty is general and can apply to anyone, whereas corruption usually involves people in authority.
- fraud
- Fraud means deceiving someone for money and does not require holding power.
Opposites
Word family
- corrupt adjective
- dishonest, or damaged (of data)
- corrupt verb
- to make dishonest or damage
- corruptly adverb
- in a dishonest way
- incorruptible adjective
- impossible to bribe or morally spoil
- corrupter noun
- a person who corrupts
Commonly confused: corruption or corrosion?
corruption vs corrosion
Corrosion is the gradual damage of metal by chemical action, not dishonesty.
Practice
The mayor resigned after a scandal involving bribes, a clear case of ____.
Choose one answer.
Corruption means dishonest behavior by those in power, such as taking bribes. Corrosion is damage to metal and sounds similar but is unrelated.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “corruption”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.