When it comes to ideology, Warren makes for a rotten heir to Kennedy.
But they have to be aggressive enough about it for their efforts to bear some actual (rotten) fruit.
While government IT fails more often than it should, not all efforts are rotten apples.
There was a terrible, sulphurous smell, like rotten eggs, and a tremendous pressure against my chest.
The lab report came back showing the specimen was some kind of rotten meat.
The pole was rotten and George's weight at the top caused it to break.
Lollie's had a rotten life, and she's just sick of it, that's all.
Props are rotten and cowardly, whether they are props of love or not.
The members for rotten boroughs and pocket-boroughs had disappeared.
The market-day is, in fact, the event of the week, and the streets of the market-town are the rotten Row of the neighbourhood.
c.1300, from a Scandinavian source akin to Old Norse rotinn "decayed," past participle of verb related to rotna "to decay," from Proto-Germanic stem *rut- (see rot (v.)). Sense of "corrupt" is from late 14c.; weakened sense of "bad" first recorded 1881. Rotten apple is from a saying traced back to at least 1528: "For one rotten apple lytell and lytell putrifieth an whole heape." The Rotten Row in London and elsewhere probably is from a different word, but of uncertain origin.
adjective
Deplorable; nasty; inept and bungled: This is a rotten situation altogether (1880+)
