an oppressive quality that is laborious and solemn and lacks grace or fluency; "a book so serious that it sometimes subsided into ponderousness"; "his lectures tend to heaviness and repetition"
inducement (as of a public official) by improper means (as bribery) to violate duty (as by commiting a felony); "he was held on charges of corruption and racketeering"
destroying someone's (or some group's) honesty or loyalty; undermining moral integrity; "corruption of a minor"; "the big city's subversion of rural innocence"
moral perversion; impairment of virtue and moral principles; "the luxury and corruption among the upper classes"; "moral degeneracy followed intellectual degeneration"; "its brothels, its opium parlors, its depravity"; "Rome had fallen into moral putrefaction"