ROTTEN BOROUGH • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... it can always throw a considerable portion of taxes from itself; and as an hereditary house, accountable to nobody, it resembles a rotten borough, whose consent is to be courted by interest. There are but few of its members, who are not in some mode or other participators, or disposers of the public money. One turns a candle-holder, or a lord in waiting; another a lord of the bed-chamber, ...

— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... things implies no common mind. Ambition is in some sort genius. Though I would rather wear out my life in arguing a broad speculative question than in caballing for the election to a wardmote, or canvassing for votes in a rotten borough, yet I should think that the loftiest Epicurean philosopher might descend from his punctilio to identify himself with the support of a great principle, or to prop a falling state. This is what the legislators and founders of empire did of old; and the permanence of their institutions ...

— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... canvasser, an untiring combatant, and of course the readiest and most fluent of speakers. Wilde after hearing him said sententiously to one of his own supporters, 'There is a great future before this young man.' The rather rotten borough became suffused with the radiant atmosphere of Olympus. The ladies presented their hero with a banner of red silk, and an address expressive of their conviction that the good old Red cause was the salvation of their ancient ...

— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the Test valley for more than a mile with its beautiful woods and glades. Its eastern boundary is close to Whitchurch, seven miles from Andover. Whitchurch was another famous posting centre and, like Andover, a rotten borough. Here an important cross-country route from Oxford to Winchester tapped the Exeter road and here the modern ways of the Great Western and South Western cross each other at right angles. At the famous "White Hart" Newman wrote the opening part of the ...

— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes