corruption

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or process of corrupting.
2. n. The state of being corrupt.
3. n. Decay; rot.
4. n. Archaic Something that corrupts.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of corrupting, or the state of being corrupt or putrid; the destruction of the natural form of an organic body by decomposition accompanied by putrefaction; physical dissolution.
2. n. Putrid matter; pus.
3. n. Depravity; wickedness; perversion or extinction of moral principles; loss of purity or integrity.
4. n. Debasement or deterioration.
5. n. Perversion; vitiation: as, a corruption of language.
6. n. A corrupt or debased form of a word: as, “sparrow-grass” is a corruption of “asparagus.”
7. n. A perverting, vitiating, or depraving influence; more specifically, bribery.
8. n. In law, taint; impurity or defect (of heritable blood) in consequence of an act of attainder of treason or felony, by which a person is disabled from inheriting lands from an ancestor, and can neither retain those in his possession nor transmit them by descent to his heirs. This penalty, along with attainder itself, has been abolished in Great Britain, and never existed in the United States.
9. n. Synonyms Putrefaction, putrescence.
10. n. Pollution, defilement, contamination, vitiation, demoralization, foulness, baseness.

Wiktionary

1. n. 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.
2. n. The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration.
3. n. The product of corruption; putrid matter.
4. n. The decomposition of biological matter.
5. n. The destruction of data by manipulation of parts of it, usually a result of imperfections in storage or transmission media which randomly alter parts of the data.
6. n. 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.
7. n. A debased or nonstandard form of a word, expression, or text, resulting from misunderstanding, transcription error, mishearing, etc.
8. n. Something that is evil but is supposed to be good.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration.
2. n. The product of corruption; putrid matter.
3. n. 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.
4. n. The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. decay of matter (as by rot or oxidation)
2. n. lack of integrity or honesty (especially susceptibility to bribery); use of a position of trust for dishonest gain
3. n. destroying someone's (or some group's) honesty or loyalty; undermining moral integrity
4. n. moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles
5. n. inducement (as of a public official) by improper means (as bribery) to violate duty (as by commiting a felony)
6. n. in a state of progressive putrefaction