TAINTED • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Tainted

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/tˈeɪntɪd/ Listen

verb

Taint v. t.

To injure, as a lance, without breaking it; also, to break, as a lance, but usually in an unknightly or unscientific manner. (Obs.) "Do not fear; I have A staff to taint, and bravely."

To hit or touch lightly, in tilting. (Obs.) "They tainted each other on the helms and passed by."

Taint v. t.

To imbue or impregnate with something extraneous, especially with something odious, noxious, or poisonous; hence, to corrupt; to infect; to poison; as, putrid substance taint the air.

Fig.: To stain; to sully; to tarnish. "His unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love."

Synonyms: To contaminate; defile; pollute; corrupt; infect; disease; vitiate; poison.

Taint v. t. Aphetic form of Attaint.

Taint v. i. (past & past part. tainted; pres. part. tainting) To thrust ineffectually with a lance. (Obs.)

Taint v. i.

To be infected or corrupted; to be touched with something corrupting. "I can not taint with fear."

To be affected with incipient putrefaction; as, meat soon taints in warm weather.

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Etymology of 'Tainted'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tainted" Quotes from Famous Books

... public life, I acknowledge, with sincere pleasure, that his faults were much more than redeemed by great virtues, great sacrifices, and great services. My political hostility to him was never in the smallest degree tainted by personal ill-will. After his fall from power a cordial reconciliation took place between us: I admired the wisdom, the moderation, the disinterested patriotism, which he invariably showed during the last and best years of ...

— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... but agree to it. "Yes, that uncle and aunt! They have injured the finest mind; for sometimes, Fanny, I own to you, it does appear more than manner: it appears as if the mind itself was tainted." ...

— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... servant of Napoleon: unknown to Napoleon, he was the confidential agent of Lowe; and behind both their backs he was the confidential informant of the British Government.... Testimony from such a source is ... tainted." Neither men nor angels will disentangle the ...

— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... her feeling about him in the least. He did not know that she had had to give up her room for him—that she detested the mines and everything tainted by them, and himself as head and forefront of the offence—that she regarded him as an outsider and a foreigner and therefore quite out of place in Sark. He only knew that he saw very little of her and would have liked to see a great ...

— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing ...

— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

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