Noun

(en noun)

Any epidemic disease that is highly contagious, infectious, virulent and devastating.

* 1949 - Bruce Kiskaddon, George R. Stewart,

The snowshoe-rabbits build up through the years until they reach a climax when they seem to be everywhere; then with dramatic suddenness their pestilence falls upon them.

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.