Also means
corrupt
Usage Note
Marcio agrees in gender and number: marcia, marci, marce. Applied to food it means physically rotten; applied to people or institutions it means thoroughly corrupt. The idiom avere torto marcio means 'to be completely wrong' — a fossilised usage where marcio intensifies the adjective rather than meaning 'rotten'. Note the stress on the first syllable.
Examples
"La frutta era tutta marcia per il caldo."
Natural Translation
All the fruit had gone rotten in the heat.
Literal Translation
The fruit was all rotten because-of the heat.
Related Words
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