rotten borough

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noun

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

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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Origin of rotten borough

First recorded in 1805–15

Words nearby rotten borough

rototome, rotovate, rotproof, rotten, rotten apple, rotten borough, rotten egg, rotten ice, rottenstone, rotten to the core, rotter

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2022

How to use rotten borough in a sentence

Guy Molinari, a former Staten Island borough president, pushed back against that view.
Will Dirty Pol Vito Fossella Replace Dirty Pol Michael Grimm?|David Freedlander|December 31, 2014|DAILY BEAST
We are a nation in which a few rotten apples are spoiling different barrels.
Obama Is Right on Race. The Media Is Wrong.|Keli Goff|December 29, 2014|DAILY BEAST
It has grown from a rotten root—striving to replace human judgment with detailed dictates.
Red Tape Is Strangling Good Samaritans|Philip K. Howard|December 27, 2014|DAILY BEAST
The borough officially became the least affordable place to live in America.
Eric Garner Was Just a Number to Them|Michael Daly|December 5, 2014|DAILY BEAST

Take, for example, the borough of the Bronx in New York City.
Legal but Still Poor: The Economic Consequences of Amnesty|Joel Kotkin|November 21, 2014|DAILY BEAST
But this alliance is rotten, and cannot endure; the Western men are no partizans of slavery.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846|Various
Sounds rotten, but that's their style; and you've been through the mill at home enough to know what it is to be knifed socially.
Raw Gold|Bertrand W. Sinclair
Clodd tells us that one cubic inch of rotten stone contains 41 thousand million vegetable skeletons of diatoms.
God and my Neighbour|Robert Blatchford
He looked up from his fish and replied, somewhat cuttingly, "By contesting a borough and getting elected."
Ancestors|Gertrude Atherton
At the end of 1881 there were 93,776 children in the borough between the ages of three and thirteen.
Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham|Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

British Dictionary definitions for rotten borough

rotten borough

noun

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

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012