rotten borough
Syllables: rot·ten bor·oughUK/ˌɹɒtn̩ ˈbʌɹə//ˌɹɑtn̩ ˈbʌɹoʊ/
rotten borough noun: a parliamentary borough that was represented in Parliament although the number of voters had diminished so greatly that they were largely controlled by the main landowner; such boroughs were abolished in the 19th century.
Noun
rotten borough (plural rotten boroughs)
- A parliamentary borough that was represented in Parliament although the number of voters had diminished so greatly that they were largely controlled by the main landowner; such boroughs were abolished in the 19th century.
- […] Queen's Crawley was no longer so populous a place as it had been in Queen Bess's time—nay, was come down to that condition of borough which used to be denominated rotten–yet, as Sir Pitt Crawley would say with perfect justice in his elegant way, "Rotten! be hanged—it produces me a good fifteen...[1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Crawley of Queen’s Crawley”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC, page 57
- Synonyms:
- nomination borough, proprietorial borough
- A parliamentary constituency or electoral district in a similar situation.
rotten borough meaning in Tamil
rotten borough in Tamil
- நிலக்கிழார் வேட்பாளர்
Synonyms of rotten borough
Forms of rotten borough
| plural | rotten boroughs |
|---|
Origin of rotten borough
From rotten (“in a state of decay”) + borough (“type of administrative district”), because such boroughs were regarded as having “decayed” due to their voters moving away to other places.
Words that rhyme with rotten borough
Questions about rotten borough
- What does rotten borough mean?
- Rotten borough means a parliamentary borough that was represented in Parliament although the number of voters had diminished so greatly that they were largely controlled by the main landowner; such boroughs were abolished in the 19th century.
- What is rotten borough in Tamil?
- Rotten borough in Tamil is நிலக்கிழார் வேட்பாளர். See Rotten borough meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is rotten borough?
- Rotten borough is a noun.
- How do you pronounce rotten borough?
- Rotten borough is pronounced /ˌɹɒtn̩ ˈbʌɹə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of rotten borough?
- The plural of rotten borough is rotten boroughs.
Words near rotten borough in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rotten borough (page history and authors); rotten borough (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-rotten borough.ogg.
Cite this entry: “rotten borough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rotten_borough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.