Grammar: Clichés 5

In the noughts and teens, the popular word "corrosive" was used to mean practically anything. It has rather gone out now.

We neutralize the corrosive bourgeois preoccupation with luxury that can so often threaten the creativity which drives real fashion. (Gloss, via Slate Sept 2013)

The European Central Bank’s decision to raise rates to 1.25% – to stop Germany’s economy overheating – could have “a deeply corrosive impact on the euro’s long-term future”, agreed Heather Stewart in The Observer. (April 2011)

Excessive remuneration packages for executives can be corrosive. Such schemes should be put to a vote. (Guardian headline 30 Aug 01. In the text, “Uncontrolled excessive pay can be socially corrosive and undermine morale”.

The hounding of politicians by a cynical and corrosive media is a disaster for democracy. (Guardian 10/28/2002)

A single item was on the agenda: how to deal with the corrosive allegations arising from the collapse of the Paul Burrell trial. (Independent Nov 16 02)

It is four years of corrosive Bush Middle East policies, coming on top of decades of US incompetence and missed opportunities. (Arab News May 6 2004)

The systematic spread of political correctness has a corrosive effect on our society. (Michael Howard Aug 2004)

Much of modern television is not only bad but socially corrosive, coarsening and brutalising viewers through its obsessions with sex, aggression and voyeurism, John Humphrys, the broadcaster, has declared. (Telegraph website August 28, 2004)

Isn’t it lazy or corrosive to slam a person or a thing just because they happen to have a public dimension? (Times June 4, 2005)

The importation of New World gold into Spain coincided with a corrosive inflation that has come to be known as the "price revolution". (snopes.com)

As yet there are no political parties, raising fears that voting blocs will form along corrosive tribal lines. (Guardian Dec 19 2005)

The fact that the sea is presided over by lunatics who believe there should be commercial fishing in 100% of the sea breeds a culture that is corrosive. (Charles Clover, 2006)

People thinking they have a right to drink on the tube "is corrosive to society ... Most corrosive of all is the welfare culture.” (Anthony Browne, head of Policy Exchange)

Caroline Spelman, shadow Communities & Local Government secretary, said: "This is a Whitehall farce at taxpayers' expense. Taxes have gone through the roof under Labour, and examples like these show how the public's money has been squandered on vanity ministerial projects and a corrosive culture of spin. (Public Servant Daily 2009)

Fake news is calculated and corrosive. (BBC Feb 2019. They may have a point.)

More here, and links to the rest.