rotten
Americanadjective
-
decomposing or decaying; putrid; tainted, foul, or bad-smelling.
- Antonyms:
- sound
-
corrupt or morally offensive.
- Synonyms:
- immoral
- Antonyms:
- moral
-
wretchedly bad, unpleasant, or unsatisfactory; miserable.
a rotten piece of work; a rotten day at the office.
-
contemptible; despicable.
a rotten little liar; a rotten trick.
- Synonyms:
- treacherous, unwholesome, disgusting
-
(of soil, rocks, etc.) soft, yielding, or friable as the result of decomposition.
-
Australian Slang. drunk.
adjective
-
affected with rot; decomposing, decaying, or putrid
-
breaking up, esp through age or hard use; disintegrating
rotten ironwork
-
morally despicable or corrupt
-
untrustworthy, disloyal, or treacherous
-
informal unpleasant, unfortunate, or nasty
rotten luck
rotten weather
-
informal unsatisfactory or poor
rotten workmanship
-
informal miserably unwell
-
informal distressed, uncomfortable, and embarrassed
I felt rotten when I told him to go
-
(of rocks, soils, etc) soft and crumbling, esp as a result of weathering
-
slang intoxicated; drunk
adverb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of rotten
1175–1225; Middle English roten < Old Norse rotinn, past participle of an unrecorded verb meaning “to rot”
Explanation
Use the adjective rotten to describe something that is decaying or decayed. If you are like most people, you occasionally have to throw out rotten food — sometimes, it's so nasty you can't even tell what the food was in its original form! The adjective rotten also describes something that is very poor in quality. If your car has a flat tire, your dog threw up on the carpet, and your boss yelled at you, you can say you are having "a rotten day." Another use for rotten is to describe something that is damaged by decay. Weather damage can cause boards to rot, so if you are working on an old house, you should especially watch out for rotten floor boards. You wouldn't want to fall through to the basement!
Vocabulary lists containing rotten
Oh, No! Synonyms for "Bad"
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
List 3
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
So Bad: Synonyms for "Awful"
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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.
See Examples For:
By rubber-stamping a fourth term despite these toxic scandals, football's governing bodies are showing they are content to sit in rotten squalor rather than strive for something better.
From BBC ● Jul. 18, 2026
For spouses Jennifer Kraus and Abigail Cruz, the plants smelled like rotten garbage.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
"OpenAI's nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets," the complaint said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
That “Supergirl” was intergalactically rotten, so no legacy of great expectation attaches to the new film of the same name.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
Why should we listen to someone rotten enough to do what Pamela did?
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
This is an illness, a mania, but seems more like something a writer might envy, which feels even rottener than envy usually does, because Gould was a toothless madman who slept in the street.
From The New Yorker ● Jul. 27, 2015
Back in England, he yanked some young offenders out of the regular prisons, moved them away from the older, rottener apples to a Kentish village called Borstal.
From Time Magazine Archive
The wooden bridge is more askew, rottener than I remember.
From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood
Time passed and I felt rottener about standing her up without a word, and I couldn’t get up my nerve to go out to Coney and just appear on her doorstep.
From It’s like this, cat by Neville, Emily
If there is one thing rottener than another in a pretty blighted world, one thing which gives a fellow the pip and reduces him to the condition of an absolute onion, it is hopeless love.
From The Adventures of Sally by Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Oliver’s efforts to save Manny require the kind of ruthless cunning he learned earlier from the rottenest of rotten cops.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 2, 2018
“He is very, very dead. The rottenest of the rotten. . . . But hey, we have his plays, so voilà.”
From The New Yorker ● Aug. 12, 2014
“The rottenest piece of land there is,” said Mick Elbert, a local car dealer who served on the golf association board.
From New York Times ● Dec. 31, 2011
Made from the juiciest of rotten apples, the rottenest of juicy maggots, and bits of skin and rags that fell into the barrel.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 22, 2010
“I got three of them. The rottenest eggs in Sassafras Springs.”
From "The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs" by Betty G. Birney
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.
