rotten borough

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word rotten borough. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word rotten borough, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say rotten borough in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word rotten borough you have here. The definition of the word rotten borough will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofrotten borough, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.

English

WOTD – 14 September 2023

Etymology

An aerial view of Old Sarum in Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom. Old Sarum was one of the most notorious rotten boroughs (sense 1)—by the 17th century it had no residents, but the Pitt family which owned the land had the right to nominate non-resident tenants for plots of land who then voted for two Members of Parliament as the Pitts directed.

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.

Pronunciation

Noun

rotten borough (plural rotten boroughs) (chiefly UK, politics)

  2. (historical) 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.
    • , London: Bradbury and Evans , published 1848, →OCLC, page 57:
      […] 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 hundred a year."]
  3. (by extension) A parliamentary constituency or electoral district in a similar situation.

Hypernyms

Coordinate terms

Translations

See also

References

  1. ^ “rotten borough, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022; see also “rotten borough, n.” under “rotten, adj., n., and adv.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, March 2023.

Further reading

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia