Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To make impure or unclean by contact or mixture.
- v. To expose to or permeate with radioactivity.
- n. One that contaminates; a contaminant.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To render impure by mixture or contact; defile; pollute; sully; tarnish; taint; corrupt: usually in a figurative sense.
- Synonyms To infect, poison, corrupt. See taint.
- Contaminated; polluted; defiled; tainted; corrupt.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To soil, stain, or corrupt by contact; to tarnish; to sully; to taint; to pollute; to defile.
- adj. Contaminated; defiled; polluted; tainted.
WordNet 3.0
- v. make impure
- v. make radioactive by adding radioactive material
Etymologies
- Middle English contaminaten, from Latin contāmināre, contāmināt-; see tag- in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“As the cook cut the melons s/he transferred the contaminate from the outside of the fruit to the inside.”
“David Cameron's favourite thinktank, Policy Exchange, published a book-length condemnation which claims that The Spirit Level's authors had produced a shabby, shallow work which threatened to "contaminate" our presumably honest political debate, as if it were an oil slick heading towards a pristine coast.”
“The authorities had been allowed to "contaminate" the results,”
“To me it recalls the thinking that a drop of African blood in one's heritage was enough to "contaminate" one's whiteness.”
“While local television broadcasts are permitted, cinemas are banned, and Khan rails against Western videos that "contaminate" Islamic and Afghan cultural values.”
“That human explorers will "contaminate" Mars is inevitable -- humans contain oceans of bacteria, and a human presence on Mars is sure to leave some behind.”
“The guards scrambled to pick up all the leaflets so our message wouldn't "contaminate" the criminals confined in the prison.”
On Yankee Station
“The 18,000 Druse and 2,000 Alawites on the Golan would be reunited with their co-religionists, but decades of life under the Zionists will have created social, economic and, yes, political expectations that could "contaminate" the larger Syrian polity.”
“This of course raises a question: if shoes are so ritually unclean, just how are these people holding these shoes so as not to 'contaminate' themselves?”
“If I were to perform this work and have my LLC send them the bill, would these earnings "contaminate" my passive income thereby screwing up my tax situation?”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘contaminate’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
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Kangaroo Words
Words containing letters in sequence, together or apart, that form a definition or instance of the subsuming word. E.g., conTAmINaTe = the kangaroo word. TAINT = the joey. Theme from a NYT X-word ...
encourage, chariot, precipitation, neurotic, feaster, unsightly, charisma, inheritor, masculine, honorable, contaminate, regulate and 103 more...
oroboros conTAmINaTe Apr 22, 2008