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rotten borough

rot·ten bor·ough
R r

Transcription

    • US Pronunciation
    • US IPA
    • [rot-n bur-oh, buhr-oh]
    • /ˈrɒt n ˈbɜr oʊ, ˈbʌr oʊ/
    • US Pronunciation
    • US IPA
    • [rot-n bur-oh, buhr-oh]
    • /ˈrɒt n ˈbɜr oʊ, ˈbʌr oʊ/

Definitions of rotten borough words

  • noun rotten borough (before the Reform Bill of 1832) any English borough that had very few voters yet was represented in Parliament. 1
  • noun rotten borough an election district that has more representatives in a legislative body than the number of its constituents would normally call for. 1
  • noun rotten borough (before the Reform Act of 1832) any of certain English parliamentary constituencies with only a very few electors 0
  • noun rotten borough in England (before the Reform Act of 1832), a borough with only a few voters but with the right to send a representative to Parliament 0
  • noun rotten borough any electoral district or political unit with greater representation than its population warrants 0
See all 5 definitions of rotten borough

Information block about the term

Origin of rotten borough

First appearance:

before 1805
One of the 41% newest English words
First recorded in 1805-15

Historical Comparancy

Parts of speech for Rotten borough

noun
adjective
verb
adverb
pronoun
preposition
conjunction
determiner
exclamation
Full grammatical hierarchy of Rotten borough

rotten borough popularity

A pretty common term. Usually people know it’s meaning, but prefer to use a more spread out synonym. About 32% of English native speakers know the meaning and use word.
According to our data about 66% of words is more used. This is a rare but used term. It occurs in the pages of specialized literature and in the speech of educated people.

rotten borough usage trend in Literature

This diagram is provided by Google Ngram Viewer

See also

Matching words

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