rotten borough
- noun
- /ˈrɒtən ˈbʌrə/
- Literature
:
distrito corrupto
- We do not live in a rotten borough where the votes are his to harvest.
So this hill became a rotten borough.
- So this hill became a rotten borough.
Examples
-
His seat for a Yorkshire rotten borough was abolished by the Reform Act, and he failed to get back into the Commons after 1832.
Academic text (2010) -
His seat for a Yorkshire rotten borough was abolished by the Reform Act, and he failed to get back into the Commons after 1832.
-
In the current day, look at the way in which the US has become a "rotten borough," in which only money can buy power.
Blog text (28) -
We do not live in a rotten borough where the votes are his to harvest.
Blog text (33) -
Even the rotten boroughs found their defenders.
Academic text (2010) -
In 18th-century England, parliamentary constituencies that had dwindled to just a handful of voters were labeled rotten boroughs.
Synonyms
A very small town where one person or family controls who is elected to Parliament
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'rotten' (bad/corrupt) and 'borough' (town/constituency) give a learner a general sense of a corrupt or problematic town, so part of the meaning is inferable. However, the precise historical-political sense — a small parliamentary constituency easily controlled before reform — is context-specific and not fully predictable from the words alone, making the expression only partially transparent.
Etymology
The term rotten borough may come from small towns, or boroughs, that had become empty and rotten, so only a few people could vote and a rich landowner could control the choice. That's why it came to mean 'an area with very few voters that could be easily controlled'.
