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To seek for, expose, or charge, esp. habitually, corruption, real or alleged, on the part of public men and corporations. On April 14, 1906, President Roosevelt delivered a speech on "The Man with the Muck Rake," in which he deprecated sweeping and unjust charges of corruption against public men and corporations. The p…

hence, corrupt; wicked. [Archaic] So shines a good deed in a naughty world. Shak.

One of certain corrupt persons in the early church at Ephesus, who are censured in rev. ii. 6, 15.

Resembling the smell or taste of roast meat, or of corrupt animal matter. [R.]

your purses, nor scrip for your journey. Matt. x. 9, 10. Where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt. Matt. vi. 20. I love him not, nor fear him. Shak. Where neither party is nor true, nor kind. Shak. Simois nor Xanthus shall be wanting there. Dryden.

s; destructive; unwholesome; insalubrious; as, noxious air, food, or climate; pernicious; corrupting to morals; as, noxious practices or examples. Too frequent an appearance in places of public resort is noxious to spiritual promotions. Swift.

A corruption of God's; -- formerly used in oaths and ejaculatory phrases. "Ods bodikin." "Ods pity." Shak.

A corruption of Annotto.

as an herbaceous annual in temperate regions; -- called also castor-oil plant. [Sometimes corrupted into palmcrist.]

luxuriously; to glut; as, to pamper the body or the appetite. "A body . . . pampered for corruption." Dr. T. Dwight.

Morbid; corrupt; as, peccant humors. Bacon.

ause to make oath knowingly to what is untrue; to make guilty of perjury; to forswear; to corrupt; -- often used reflexively; as, he perjured himself. Want will perjure The ne'er-touched vestal. Shak.

uth, rectitude, or propriety; to divert from a right use, end, or way; to lead astray; to corrupt; also, to misapply; to misinterpret designedly; as, to pervert one's words. Dryden. He, in the serpent, had perverted Eve. Milton.

Pestilential; noxious; pernicious; mischievous. "Corrupt and pestilent." Milton. "What a pestilent knave is this same!" Shak.

f the pokeweed; also, the plant itself. See Pokeweed. -- Pigeon English Etym: [perhaps a corruption of business English], an extraordinary and grotesque dialect, employed in the commercial cities of China, as the medium of communication between foreign merchants and the Chinese. Its base is English, with a mixture of…

To taint; to corrupt; to vitiate; as, vice poisons happiness; slander poisoned his mind. Whispering tongues can poison truth. Coleridge.

Having the qualities or effects of poison; venomous; baneful; corrupting; noxious. Shak. -- Poi"son*ous*ly, adv. -- Poi"son*ous*ness, n.

scholar at Merton College, Oxford, who has a certain academical allowance or portion; -- corrupted into postmaster. Shipley.

to employ. [Obs.] In malice to this good knight's wife, I practiced Ubaldo and Ricardo to corrupt her. Massinger.

Deterioration; degeneracy; corruption; especially, moral crookedness; moral perversion; perverseness; depravity; as, the pravity of human nature. "The pravity of the will." South.