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.

* (Henry Hallam) The Constitutional History of England

It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries, . . . to exite popular indignation against them.

* (George Bancroft)

They abstained from some of the worst methods of corruption usual to their party in its earlier days.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=(Edwin Black), title=Internal Combustion

, chapter=1 citation , passage=But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-07, author=(Gary Younge)

, volume=188, issue=26, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Hypocrisy lies at heart of Manning prosecution , passage=WikiLeaks did not cause these uprisings but it certainly informed them. The dispatches revealed details of corruption and kleptocracy that many Tunisians suspected, but could not prove, and would cite as they took to the streets.}}

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 product of corruption; putrid matter.

The decomposition of biological matter.

Bribing.

(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.

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.

(linguistics) A debased or nonstandard form of a word, expression, or text, resulting from misunderstanding, transcription error, mishearing, etc.

Something that is evil but is supposed to be good.

* (Francis Bacon)

The inducing and accelerating of putrefaction is a subject of very universal inquiry; for corruption is a reciprocal to generation.

Noun

(en noun)

(medicine, oncology, disease) A disease in which the cells of a tissue undergo uncontrolled (and often rapid) proliferation.

* {{quote-book, year=2006, author=(Edwin Black)

, title=Internal Combustion , chapter=1 citation , passage=If successful, Edison and Ford—in 1914—would move society away from the

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=76, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Snakes and ladders , passage=Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you.}}

(figuratively) Something which spreads within something else, damaging the latter.

{{quote-book, year=1999, author=Bruce Clifford Ross-Larson, title=Effective Writing, page=134 citation

, passage=Sierra Leone's post-dictator problems are almost absurd in their breadth. It once exported rice; now it can't feed itself. The life span of the average citizen is 39, the shortest in Africa. Unemployment stands at 87 percent and tuberculosis is spreading out of control. Corruption, brazen and ubiquitous, is a cancer on the economy.}}