Word.ws English Dictionary

rotten to the core

rotten to the core adjective: completely rotten.

Adjective

rotten to the core (not comparable)

  1. (literal) Completely rotten.
  2. (figuratively, an organization, or a cultural phenomenon) Corrupt; evil; immoral.
    • Ain't talkin' 'bout love / My love is rotten to the core / Ain't talkin' 'bout love / Just like I told you before.1978, Van Halen, "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love", Van Halen, reported in The Little Black Book of Metal Hits (2006), p. 6

Questions about rotten to the core

What does rotten to the core mean?
Rotten to the core means completely rotten.
What part of speech is rotten to the core?
Rotten to the core is an adjective.

Words near rotten to the core in the dictionary

  1. rotten egg
  2. rotten egg gas
  3. rotten eggs
  4. rotten stone
  5. rotten through
  6. rotten to the core
  7. rotten-egg gas
  8. Rottenberg
  9. Rottenbergs
  10. rottened
  11. rottener

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rotten to the core (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.

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