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Adulterate   Listen
verb
Adulterate  v. t.  (past & past part. adulterated; pres. part. adulterating)  
1.
To defile by adultery. (Obs.)
2.
To corrupt, debase, or make impure by an admixture of a foreign or a baser substance; as, to adulterate food, drink, drugs, coin, etc. "The present war has... adulterated our tongue with strange words."
Synonyms: To corrupt; defile; debase; contaminate; vitiate; sophisticate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adulterate" Quotes from Famous Books



... witnesses, that she, For ages lying beside the mole, Was on the unanticipated miracle day Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal, Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew What Lucifer of the Mint had coined His bride's adulterate currency Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate; She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate: His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed. Read backward on the hoar-frost's brilliant crust; Beneath it read. Athirst to kiss, athirst to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... one of the most potent influences against drunkenness that our country has seen. The California wines are practically the only pure wines accessible to Americans. They are so plentiful that there is no motive to adulterate them, and their use among those of us who are so unwise as to drink anything except water ought to be effectively advocated as supplanting the drinking of beer poisoned with strychnine, whisky poisoned with ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... you should not be able to fix a character, volatile and light, like your lover's; yet when I recollect his warmth of heart and high sense, and your beauty, gentleness, charms of conversation, and purely disinterested love for one whose great worldly advantages might so easily bias or adulterate affection, I own that I have no dread for your future fate, no feeling that can at all darken the brightness of anticipation. Thank you, dearest, for the delicate kindness with which you allude to ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... not only ignorance, but love, combines to adulterate the tradition. Every man wishes to give his own country an interest in anything great. What an effort has been made to suck Sir ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts, Won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming virtuous queen: O, Hamlet, what a falling-off was there! From me, whose love was of that dignity, That it went hand ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... leagues to cheer, His quick bells wildly jingling on the way? No! as he speeds, he chants 'Viva el Rey!' And checks his song to execrate Godoy, The royal wittol Charles, and curse the day When first Spain's queen beheld the black-eyed boy, And gore-faced Treason sprung from her adulterate joy. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... Anamirta cocculus. Contains a poisonous active principle, picrotoxin; used to adulterate beer, and ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson

... Parliament or elsewhere by the British Nonconformist conscience of our day; or would be acceptable in any capacity to the grocer-deacon of our provincial towns, who, not content with being allowed to sand his sugar and adulterate his tea unrebuked, would socially ostracise every one whose conduct did not square with his conventional shibboleths. Martin Luther was a child of his time also as a boon companion. The freedom of his living in the years ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... business, and saw a great part of life through the commercial spectacles commonly worn now-a-days. Nevertheless conscience unsettled him. One day he heard his partners joking over the legislative omission by virtue of which they were able to adulterate their disinfectants to any extent without fear of penalty; their laughter grated upon him, and he got out of the way. If he could lay aside a few thousands of pounds, assuredly his connection with the affair should be terminated. So he lived, for his own part, on a pound a week, and informed Ada ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... of the gold mine. We mix alloy of duplicity and greed with the virgin metal of our standard of value. By improved mining methods we nearly double our output of gold, and so cheapen it by well-nigh a half. This shrunken gold dollar is small enough; but that is not all. We adulterate and divide it by, say, another half when we falsely double its cost. This we certainly do when we issue counterfeit promises as against good coin; for in civilization and commerce always the genuine coinage has to pay the cost of the counterfeit. Your tailor charges you a stiff price for your ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... laboriously measured by some of them; Aristotle and Theophrastus admired; and Galen, perhaps, by some is even worshipped. But that those who use the arts of unbelievers for their heretical opinion and adulterate the simple faith of the divine Scriptures by the craft of the godless are not near the faith, what need is there to say? Therefore, they have laid their hands boldly upon the divine Scriptures, alleging that they have corrected them. That I am not speaking ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... ground together, the same quantity will go as far and make about as good a beverage as the pure article, and a better one than much of the ground and adulterated coffee offered in the market. Indeed, if people will adulterate their coffee, it were much to be wished that they would use nothing more harmful than the Peanut ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones

... adulterate grown, When mixed with fear, they never could be known. I wish no ill might her I love befal; But she ne'er loved, who durst not venture all. Her life and fame should my concernment be; But she should ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... delicate chemical test. Soda being now far cheaper than potash, and also the alkaline equivalent, as previously explained, being greatly in favor of soda, there has been every inducement to "enterprising" producers of ashes to adulterate them with soda, which, in many cases, has been largely done. Another source of potash has been beetroot ashes, very similar to wood ashes, and also German carbonate of potash, which latter about corresponds to a common soda ash, as compared with caustic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various

... hence. Here now, put case our author should, once more, Swear that his play were good; he doth implore, You would not argue him of arrogance: Howe'er that common spawn of ignorance, Our fry of writers, may beslime his fame, And give his action that adulterate name. Such full-blown vanity he more doth loth, Than base dejection; there's a mean 'twixt both, Which with a constant firmness he pursues, As one that knows the strength of his own Muse. And this he hopes all free souls will allow: Others ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... fruit There where they grew first, as where they are new set. Perfumes, the more they are chaf'd, the more they render Their pleasing scents, and so affliction Expresseth virtue fully, whether true, Or else adulterate. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... year mangles, batters, and destroys out of all humanness thousands of working-men, women, and children. He will chatter about things refined and spiritual and godlike like himself, and he and the men who herd with him will calmly adulterate the commodities they put upon the market and which annually kill tens of thousands of ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... thing to gather almost any fern for male fern; to throw in anything that will increase weight, to wash imperfectly, and commit many other sins that lie with the collector; beyond that I don't like to think. I suppose there are men who deliberately adulterate pure stuff to make it go farther, but when it comes to drugs, I scarcely can speak of it calmly. I like to do a thing right. I raise most of my plants, bushes, and herbs. I gather exactly in season, wash carefully if water dare be used, clean them otherwise ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... that those only laugh at Love to whom the fullness of living has been denied, in whose cold veins, adulterate with inherited disease, a stagnant liquid mocks the purpose of the rich red blood of a healthy race; that in that laugh of theirs is the, knell of them and of their people; that the nation which has ceased to love has ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... apprehension, The lights of judgment's throne, shine any where, Our doubtful author hopes this is their sphere; And therefore opens he himself to those, To other weaker beams his labours close, As loth to prostitute their virgin-strain, To every vulgar and adulterate brain. In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath, She shuns the print of any beaten path; And proves new ways to come to learned ears: Pied ignorance she neither loves, nor fears. Nor hunts she after popular applause, Or foamy ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... "domestics" and "prints," or calico. If the fibre averages a little longer than the common grades it is reserved for canvas. Ordinary Peruvian cotton has a fibre nearly two inches long; it is used in the manufacture of hosiery and balbriggan underwear, and also to adulterate wool. The long-staple cotton of the Piura Valley is bought by British manufacturers at a high price, and used in the webbing of rubber tires and hose. Egyptian cotton is very fine and is used mainly in the manufacture of thread and the ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... year, 1630, Thomas Carew in verses prefixed to Davenport's Just Italian, attacks the Red Bull and the Cockpit as "adulterate" stages where "noise prevails," and "not a tongue of th' untun'd kennel can a line repeat of serious sense." Queen Henrietta's Men probably continued to occupy the building until May 12, 1636, when the theatres were again closed on account of a serious outbreak of the plague. The plague continued ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... profaned. 5. But the Lord in His divine providence takes the greatest care that they are not received from the understanding by the will sooner or more largely than man as of himself removes evil in the external man. 6. Should it welcome them sooner or in larger measure, the will would adulterate good and the understanding would falsify truth by mingling them with evils and falsities. 7. The Lord therefore admits man inwardly into truths of wisdom and goods of love only so far as man can be kept in them to the ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... food in Australia is cheaper and more plentiful than in England, but poorer in quality. Adulteration is, of course, as yet unknown, or but very little known, for the simple reason that it costs more to adulterate than to provide the genuine article. The working-man's food here is also immeasurably better and cheaper. Mutton he gets almost for the asking, and up-country almost without it. Bread is only 11/4d. ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... some reason to suspect that the old custom of using Darnel to adulterate malt and distilled liquors has not been wholly abandoned. Farmers in Devonshire are fond of the Ray Grass, which they call "Eaver" or "Iver"; and "Devon-ever" is noted ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie



Words linked to "Adulterate" :   dilute, load, doctor up, extend, debase, adulterator, adulterated, corrupt, water down, impure, spoil, debased, adulterant



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