corruption
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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10 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "corruption", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "corruption" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "corruption" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
corruption is aEnglishnoun. It means: The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity. Pronounced /kəˈɹʌpʃən/. It ranks #3,934 in English word frequency. Often confused with correction.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | corruption |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kəˈɹʌpʃən/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #3,934 |
| Misspellings tracked | 14 |
| Confusable pairs | 1 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for corruption is 10 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kəˈɹʌpʃən/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,934 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 14 documented wrong-spelling variants for corruption, with forms such as "ccorruption", "corrpution", and "corrupiton". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 1 confusable-pair relationship, "correction", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from French corruption, from Latin corruptiō, equivalent to corrupt + -ion. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is corruption, spelled C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The act of corrupting or of impairing integrity, virtue, or moral principle; the state of being corrupted or debased; loss of purity or integrity.
- 2The act of corrupting or making putrid, or state of being corrupt or putrid; decomposition or disorganization, in the process of putrefaction; putrefaction; deterioration.
- 3The product of corruption; putrid matter.
- 4The decomposition of biological matter.
- 5Unethical administrative or executive practices (in government or business), including bribery (offering or receiving bribes), conflicts of interest, nepotism, embezzlement, and so on.
- 6The destruction of data by manipulation of parts of it, either by deliberate or accidental human action or by imperfections in storage or transmission media.
- 7The act of changing, or of being changed, for the worse; departure from what is pure, simple, or correct.
- 8A nonstandard form of a word, expression, or text, especially when resulting from misunderstanding, transcription error, or mishearing. (See a usage note about this sense.)
- 9Something originally good or pure that has turned evil or impure; a perversion.
Etymology
Borrowed from French corruption, from Latin corruptiō, equivalent to corrupt + -ion.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccorruption,corrpution,corrupiton,corrupption,corrupsion,corruptino,corruptionn,corruptoin,corrupttion,corrutpion,coruption,corurption,croruption,ocrruption
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for corruption
Misspelling Variants of "corruption"
Frequency rank: #3,934 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: