Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To make impure by adding extraneous, improper, or inferior ingredients.
  • adjective Spurious; adulterated.
  • adjective Adulterous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Tainted with adultery: as, “the adulterate Hastings,”
  • Debased by foreign mixture; adulterated: as, “adulterate copper,” Swift, Miscellanies.
  • To debase or deteriorate by an admixture of foreign or baser materials or elements: as, to adulterate food, drugs, or coins; adulterated doctrines.
  • To graft; give a hybrid character to.
  • To defile by adultery.
  • Synonyms To mix, degrade, corrupt, contaminate, vitiate, alloy, sophisticate.
  • To commit adultery.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb obsolete To defile by adultery.
  • transitive verb To corrupt, debase, or make impure by an admixture of a foreign or a baser substance
  • intransitive verb obsolete To commit adultery.
  • adjective Tainted with adultery.
  • adjective Debased by the admixture of a foreign substance; adulterated; spurious.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Tending to commit adultery.
  • adjective Corrupted; impure; adulterated.
  • verb To corrupt.
  • verb To spoil by adding impurities.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective mixed with impurities
  • verb corrupt, debase, or make impure by adding a foreign or inferior substance; often by replacing valuable ingredients with inferior ones

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin adulterāre, adulterāt-, to pollute; see al- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Dated 16th Century CE; modified from adulteration, likely with earlier origin in the Latin past‐participle adulteratus.

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