taint
Other forms: tainted; taints; tainting
Taint means to contaminate. If you don’t want to taint your drinking water, don’t use an old gas can as a water pitcher. Tainting something makes it impure.
To taint something is to spoil or corrupt it, whether it’s water, food, or even a person’s soul. These days, taint gets in the news if a company accidentally taints meat with salmonella bacteria, for example. If you add something poisonous to a substance, you taint it. A silly person might say when you taint something, t’aint right.
-
place under suspicion or cast doubt upon
-
contaminate with a disease or microorganismsynonyms: infecttypes:superinfectinfect (an infected cell) further or infect a cell already containing similar organismssmutaffect with smut or mildew, as of a crop such as corntype of:
-
the state of being contaminatedsynonyms: contaminationtypes:dust contaminationstate of being contaminated with dusttype of:
- MLA
- APA
- Chicago
Vocabulary lists containing taint
In preparation for the AP English Literature and Composition exam, learn the vocabulary from these metaphors -- taken from popular AP novels. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which two unlike things are compared (NOT using "like" or "as").
Told in the form of journal entries and a screenplay, this novel tells the story of a teenager on trial for murder. 1999 HarperCollins edition.