rotten

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English roten,^[2][3] apparently borrowed from Old Norse rotinn (“decayed”),^[4][5][6] which looks like the past participle of a lost Germanic strong verb; the related weak verbs include rotna (“to decay”) and the Old English verb that gave rot.^[4][5][6] The OED compares Swedish rutten and Danish rådden.^[4] Skeat connected the lost verb with an older sense "to soak".^[7] The MED suggests that Middle English forms in ō were influenced by the verb roten, "to rot".^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of flesh, the body or other animal material: decomposed, putrid: a1250, in the Ancrene Riwle.^[4] Barnhart dates it to before 1300 and Etymonline to about 1300.^[5][8]

Semantic evolution

In the late 14th century the word spread from animal matter to plants, wood and food,^[8][4] and in the same period it took on the figurative sense "morally or politically corrupt", recorded in Wycliffite writing in 1395, the sense of Shakespeare's "something is rotten in the state of Denmark".^[4][5] Chaucer uses roten ten times.^[9] Later it was applied to soft, boggy ground (?1440), crumbling rock (1566) and, first in North America, to ice that is melting and full of holes (1684).^[4][8] In Scotland and northern England it could describe wet, rainy weather.^[10][11] The weakened sense "bad, unpleasant, wretched" appears around 1880, in Stevenson's letters (1881) according to Barnhart, and the adverb rotten as an intensifier, as in spoiled rotten, in Mark Twain the same year;^[5][8] Green's Dictionary of Slang has an adverbial rotten in American speech from 1809.^[12]

Timeline

• a1250 – of animal matter, decomposed.^[4]
• a1382 – of plants, food and wood, decayed.^[4][8]
• 1395 – morally or politically corrupt.^[4][5]
• ?1440 – of ground, too soft or loose.^[4]
• a1500 – the verb rotten, to rot (now dialectal).^[4][13]
• 1566 – of rock, crumbly.^[4]
• 1684 – of ice, melting and unsound.^[4]
• 1809 – adverb, as an intensifier, in American slang.^[12]
• 1881 – bad, nasty, in Stevenson.^[5] The intensifying adverb, as in spoiled rotten, appears in Mark Twain.^[5]

Modern meaning

Adjective

1. Decayed or decomposing, especially so as to be unfit to eat or use: rotten fruit, a rotten fence post.
2. Morally despicable or corrupt; dishonest or treacherous.
3. (informal) Very bad or unpleasant: We had rotten weather all week.
4. (informal) Of poor quality; incompetent: a rotten cook.
5. (informal) Feeling ill, or upset and ashamed: I feel rotten about missing your party.
6. Of rock, ice or ground: soft, crumbling or unsound.

Adverb

1. (informal) Extremely; very much, as in spoiled rotten.

Word family

• rottenly
• rottenness
• rottenstone
• unrotten
• rotten borough

Related words

• rot
• ret

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ a b Dance, Richard; Pons-Sanz, Sara; Schorn, Brittany, eds., The Gersum Project: The Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary, gersum.org
7. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
10. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
11. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
12. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
13. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster