TAINT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does taint mean? 

• TAINT (noun)
  The noun TAINT has 1 sense:

1. the state of being contaminated

  Familiarity information: TAINT used as a noun is very rare.

• TAINT (verb)
  The verb TAINT has 2 senses:

1. place under suspicion or cast doubt upon

2. contaminate with a disease or microorganism

  Familiarity information: TAINT used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TAINT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being contaminated

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

contamination; taint

Hypernyms ("taint" is a kind of...):

impureness; impurity (the condition of being impure)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "taint"):

dust contamination (state of being contaminated with dust)

Derivation:

taint (contaminate with a disease or microorganism)

• TAINT (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they taint    ... he / she / it taints   
Past simple: tainted   
Past participle: tainted   
-ing form: tainting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Place under suspicion or cast doubt upon

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

cloud; corrupt; defile; sully; taint

Context example:

sully someone's reputation

Hypernyms (to "taint" is one way to...):

deflower; impair; mar; spoil; vitiate (make imperfect)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Contaminate with a disease or microorganism

Classified under:

Verbs of grooming, dressing and bodily care

Synonyms:

infect; taint

Hypernyms (to "taint" is one way to...):

contaminate; foul; pollute (make impure)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "taint"):

superinfect (infect (an infected cell) further or infect a cell already containing similar organisms)

smut (affect with smut or mildew, as of a crop such as corn)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s somebody

Derivation:

taint (the state of being contaminated)

 Context examples 

“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.”

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with that Vampire baptism.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

C. sakazakii is pathogenic, being the causative agent of meningitis and necrotizing enterocolitis, and is associated with tainted powdered infant formulas.

(Cronobacter sakazakii, NCI Thesaurus)

Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:—suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

That could lead to new technologies such as filters for bioremediation, which uses biological molecules to remove herbicides from tainted water, or synthetic matrices to help study human disease or aid tissue engineering to restore, improve or preserve damaged tissues or organs.

(New technique helps engineer water filters, human tissues, National Science Foundation)

I was frightened when I became conscious that I was seeing red, and the thought flashed through my mind: was I, too, becoming tainted by the brutality of my environment? —I, who even in the most flagrant crimes had denied the justice and righteousness of capital punishment?

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

Her training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring; while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller from another world, to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently, was soiled and tainted by ungracious existence.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Here Jonathan interrupted him hotly:—Do you mean to say, Professor Van Helsing, that you would bring Mina, in her sad case and tainted as she is with that devil's illness, right into the jaws of his death-trap? Not for the world! Not for Heaven or Hell!

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)