ROTTEN BOROUGH • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Rotten borough

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/rˈɑtən bˈərˌoʊ/ Listen

noun

Borough n.

In England, an incorporated town that is not a city; also, a town that sends members to parliament; in Scotland, a body corporate, consisting of the inhabitants of a certain district, erected by the sovereign, with a certain jurisdiction; in America, an incorporated town or village, as in Pennsylvania and Connecticut.

The collective body of citizens or inhabitants of a borough; as, the borough voted to lay a tax.

Close borough, or Pocket borough, a borough having the right of sending a member to Parliament, whose nomination is in the hands of a single person.

Rotten borough, a name given to any borough which, at the time of the passage of the Reform Bill of 1832, contained but few voters, yet retained the privilege of sending a member to Parliament.

adjective

Rotten adj. Having rotted; putrid; decayed; as, a rotten apple; rotten meat. Hence:

(a)

Offensive to the smell; fetid; disgusting. "You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek of the rotten fens."

(b)

Not firm or trusty; unsound; defective; treacherous; unsafe; as, a rotten plank, bone, stone. "The deepness of the rotten way."

Rotten borough. See under Borough.

Rotten stone (Min.), a soft stone, called also Tripoli (from the country from which it was formerly brought), used in all sorts of finer grinding and polishing in the arts, and for cleaning metallic substances. The name is also given to other friable siliceous stones applied to like uses.

Synonyms: Putrefied; decayed; carious; defective; unsound; corrupt; deceitful; treacherous.

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Etymology of 'Rotten borough'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Rotten borough" Quotes from Famous Books

... municipality of Sancerre, distressed at finding itself practically ruled by seven or eight large landowners, the wire-pullers of the elections, tried to shake off the electoral yoke of a creed which had reduced it to a rotten borough. This little conspiracy, plotted by a handful of men whose vanity was provoked, failed through the jealousy which the elevation of one of them, as the inevitable result, roused in the breasts of the others. This result showed the ...

— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac