By CHIT ESTELLA

MANY Filipinos would find it hard to find a Tagalog word for “honest.” Matapat, the oft-cited word, comes closer to the English word “faithful.” Malinis is clean, which could refer to many other things. The debate goes on.

They would find it easy, however, to come up with local equivalents for the word “corrupt.” In the book, “Corruptionary: Natatanging diksyonaryo ng mga salitang korapsyon,” the authors found not one or just a few but 450 words that mean or are related to the word. The origins of the expressions, however, are not government alone but mass media as well. Corrupt practices, after all, abound not just in the bureaucracy and officialdom that journalists like to criticize but in their own industry as well.