Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Rotten

Rot′ten, a. [Icel. rotinn; akin to Sw. rutten, Dan. radden. See Rot.] Having rotted; putrid; decayed; as, a rotten apple; rotten meat. Hence: (a) Offensive to the smell; fetid; disgusting.

You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate As reek of the rotten fens. Shak.

(b) Not firm or trusty; unsound; defective; treacherous; unsafe; as, a rotten plank, bone, stone. "The deepness of the rotten way." Knolles.

Rotten borough. See under Borough. — Rotten stone (Min.), a soft stone, called also Tripoli (from the country from which it was formerly brought), used in all sorts of finer grinding and polishing in the arts, and for cleaning metallic substances. The name is also given to other friable siliceous stones applied to like uses.

Syn. — Putrefied; decayed; carious; defective; unsound; corrupt; deceitful; treacherous.

— Rot′ten·ly, adv. — Rot′ten·ness, n.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.