Noun

(en noun)

A disease spread by contact

The spread or transmission of such a disease

The spread of anything harmful, as if it were such a disease

(finance) A situation in which small shocks, which initially affect only a few financial institutions or a particular region of an economy, spread to the rest of financial sectors and other countries whose economies were previously healthy.

* 2011 , , Project Syndicate, Germany Must Defend the Euro :

And it was German procrastination that aggravated the Greek crisis and caused the contagion that turned it into an existential crisis for Europe.

(finance) A resulting recession or crisis developed in such manner.

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.