rotten borough
Americannoun
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(before the Reform Bill of 1832) any English borough that had very few voters yet was represented in Parliament.
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an election district that has more representatives in a legislative body than the number of its constituents would normally call for.
noun
Etymology
Origin of rotten borough
First recorded in 1805–15
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
His "rotten borough," with its immemorial animalism, its "idiot," its saints, is propaganda of the universal order.
From Time Magazine Archive
He will find no quiet clique of the exclusive, studious and cultured; no rotten borough of the arts.
From Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson
My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven, All creeds I view with toleration thorough, And have a horror of regarding heaven As any body's rotten borough.
From The Humorous Poetry of the English Language; from Chaucer to Saxe by James Parton
As a combination, it can always throw a considerable portion of taxes from itself; and as an hereditary house, accountable to nobody, it resembles a rotten borough, whose consent is to be courted by interest.
From Writings of Thomas Paine — Volume 2 (1779-1792): the Rights of Man by Moncure Daniel Conway
My heart ferments not with the bigot's leaven, All creeds I view with toleration thorough, And have a horror of regarding heaven As anybody's rotten borough.
From The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood by Thomas Hood
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
