Other forms: corruptions
Corruption is what happens when people with power sell it. A bribe pushed across a desk, a road contract that lands with the minister's brother-in-law, a police officer who forgets the fine for cash.
In the political sense the word is uncountable, so you speak of corruption and count bribes or cases instead of saying "a corruption". It keeps hard company: rampant corruption, endemic corruption, petty corruption, an anti-corruption commission, a corruption scandal. The related word corrupt is both adjective and verb, and both can mean spoiling rather than bribing, as in a corrupt file, a corrupted download, a text corrupted by centuries of copying. Older writing uses corruption for rot itself, meat and fruit going bad in the heat. Every use shares one picture underneath: something sound broken down from the inside.
1nouncorruptionThe use of power or public office for private gain, especially through bribes.
“The inquiry found corruption at every level of the licensing office.”
2nounprocessThe process of making someone dishonest or immoral.
“He was charged with the corruption of a junior official.”
3noundamageDamage to stored data that makes it unreadable.
“A power cut during the save caused file corruption.”
4nounerrorAn error that has crept into a text through repeated copying.
“Scholars think the line is a corruption of an older reading.”
corruption is a form of dishonesty.
It arrived through French from Latin corruptio. The Latin verb behind it is built on an ancient root meaning to break, so corruption is a thing broken right through rather than merely bent. The narrow political sense, bribes and sold influence, is a late specialisation of that much older idea of spoiling.
Proto-Indo-European
*Hrewp-
Latin
corruptiō
French
corruption
English, today
corruption
Borrowed from French corruption, from Latin corruptiō, equivalent to corrupt + ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA