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Rotten   /rˈɑtən/   Listen
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.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rotten" Quotes from Famous Books



... the mob. A little further in the street was to be seen the pillory with three or four fellows fastened by the head and hands, and standing for an hour in that helpless posture, exposed to gross and cruel jeers from the multitude, who pelted them incessantly with rotten eggs and every repulsive kind of garbage that could ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... them sure, where'er their lordships run, Close at their elbows, as a morning dun; As if their grandeur, by contagion, wrought, And fame was, like a fever, to be caught: But after seven years' dance, from place to place, The(13) Dane is more familiar with his grace. Who'd be a crutch to prop a rotten peer; Or living pendant dangling at his ear, For ever whisp'ring secrets, which were blown For months before, by trumpets, thro' the town? Who'd be a glass, with flattering grimace, Still to reflect the temper of his face; Or happy pin to stick upon his ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... greatly the number of Anglomaniacs. A few dozen are as many as are to be found in any country, and any government or polity which their presence puts in peril ought to be overthrown, for assuredly it is rotten to the core. There is nothing, in fact, better calculated to make Americans hang their heads for shame than the list of small things which one hears from "good Americans," put our institutions in danger. We remember a good old publisher, in the days before international ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... last, but when it came I found that I was too stiff and sore to rise. About seven Job arrived, limping terribly, and with his face the colour of a rotten apple, and told me that Leo had slept fairly, but was very weak. Two hours afterwards Billali (Job called him "Billy-goat," to which, indeed, his white beard gave him some resemblance, or more familiarly, "Billy") came too, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... time, Harvey, having hunted for some distance, had found what he wanted—a dead tree, not so old as to be rotten, but easy to cut and split. Into the heart of this he went with his hatchet, and quickly got an armful of dry fire-wood. He came running back with the wood, and a few sheets of birch-bark—the inner part of the bark—with the wet, outer ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith


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