corrupt
adjective · verb
Simple meaning
Willing to act dishonestly for personal gain.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
keruhptSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
kɚˈʌpt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Willing to act dishonestly for personal gain; accepting bribes.
In a depraved state; debased; perverted; morally degenerate; weak in morals.
Abounding in errors; not genuine or correct; in an invalid state.
In a putrid state; spoiled; tainted; vitiated; unsound.
verb
transitive
To make corrupt; to change from good to bad; to draw away from the right path; to deprave; to pervert.
Make illegal payments to in exchange for favors or influence
To debase or make impure by alterations or additions; to falsify.
transitive
To introduce errors; to place into an invalid state.
To waste, spoil, or consume; to make worthless.
Corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Willing to act dishonestly for personal gain; accepting bribes.
Used this way, corrupt is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It criticises, but without shouting.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Gentle
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Deceptive or misleading
- Usage feel
- Critical but measured
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use corrupt
- “Humanity they knew to be corrupt...from the day of Adam's creation.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Law intended to eradicate organized crime by establishing strong sanctions and forfeiture provisions.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
- corruptionnoun
- illegaladjective
- briberynoun
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.