| English Dictionary |
ROTTEN
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| IPA (US): |  |
Dictionary entry overview: What does rotten mean?
• ROTTEN (adjective)
The adjective ROTTEN has 3 senses:
1. very bad
2. damaged by decay; hence unsound and useless
3. having decayed or disintegrated; usually implies foulness
Familiarity information: ROTTEN used as an adjective is uncommon.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
Very bad
Synonyms:
crappy; icky; lousy; rotten; shitty; stinking; stinky
Context example:
it's a stinking world
Similar:
bad (having undesirable or negative qualities)
Domain usage:
colloquialism (a colloquial expression; characteristic of spoken or written communication that seeks to imitate informal speech)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Damaged by decay; hence unsound and useless
Synonyms:
Context example:
a decayed foundation
Similar:
unsound (not in good condition; damaged or decayed)
Derivation:
rottenness (in a state of progressive putrefaction)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Having decayed or disintegrated; usually implies foulness
Context example:
dead and rotten in his grave
Similar:
stale (lacking freshness, palatability, or showing deterioration from age)
Derivation:
rottenness (the quality of rotting and becoming putrid)
rottenness (in a state of progressive putrefaction)
Context examples
What do you want in these sick and rotten cities of men?
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
And ours are black and rotten.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Then it was my turn, and I went through him as if he had been a rotten pumpkin.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The dark spot material may be hydrogen sulfide, with the pungent smell of rotten eggs.
(Hubble Sees Neptune's Mysterious Shrinking Storm, NASA)
I near died of the scurvy and was rotten with it six months in Barbadoes.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
Once I put my weight upon a rotten branch and swung for a few seconds by my hands, but in the main it was all easy climbing.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Rotten Row means 'Route de Roi', or the king's way, but now it's more like a riding school than anything else.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
There is a strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and rotten books.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Saprolite, which Riebe refers to as rotten rock, is the zone of weathered rock that retains the relative positions of mineral grains of the parent bedrock and lies between the layer of soil and harder rock underneath.
(Study explores how rock expands near soil surface in Sierra Nevada, National Science Foundation)
By good fortune, the wood was so light and rotten that it went to a thousand splinters, but Alleyne thought it best to leave the twain to settle the matter at their leisure, the more so as the sun was shining brightly once more.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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