rotten borough

American  

noun

1. (before the Reform Bill of 1832) any English borough that had very few voters yet was represented in Parliament.

2. an election district that has more representatives in a legislative body than the number of its constituents would normally call for.

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rotten borough British  

noun

1. (before the Reform Act of 1832) any of certain English parliamentary constituencies with only a very few electors Compare pocket borough

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Etymology

Origin of rotten borough

First recorded in 1805–15

Example Sentences

His "rotten borough," with its immemorial animalism, its "idiot," its saints, is propaganda of the universal order.

From Time Magazine Archive

Throughout this year in England raged the great debate over the The Reform Bill government's proposed reform of the rotten borough system.

From A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Volume Two (of Three) by Emerson, Edwin

"The vile rotten borough of Bletchingley," he calls it, and adds, from a Godstone inn, that it is "happily for Godstone out of sight."

From Highways and Byways in Surrey by Thomson, Hugh

The electors for the borough of Southwark rejected Mr. Tierney, and he was obliged to come in for a ministerial rotten borough.

From Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. — Volume 2 by Hunt, Henry

He will find no quiet clique of the exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten borough of the arts. 

From Memories and Portraits by Stevenson, Robert Louis