taint

• Note that semantic taint is not always sexual or scatological in origin. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XII No 3
• How to get rid of this taint was a problem which our statesmen found it difficult to solve. —  The Book of the Bush Containing Many Truthful Sketches Of The Early Colonial Life Of Squatters, Whalers, Convicts, Diggers, And Others Who Left Their Native Land And Never Returned
• Worse still, because this taint was at the very source, the royal government in France was already beset with that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis XIV and the meteoric rise of Napoleon The founders of Louisbourg took their time to build it. —  The Great Fortress : A chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760
• Worse still, because this taint was at the very source, the royal government in France was already beset with that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis —  The Great Fortress : A chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760
• The transmission of a taint which is a cause of criminality cannot be denied, but the close investigation of the criminal and of his family has revealed the fact that among the comparatively few criminals who are parents they do not all transmit a taint or defect to their offspring, nor among those from whom a taint has been transmitted has it necessarily been transmitted to every child. —  A Plea for the Criminal Being a reply to Dr. Chapple's work: 'The Fertility of the Unfit', and an Attempt to explain the leading principles of Criminological and Reformatory Science

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context