TAINTED

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does tainted mean? 

• TAINTED (adjective)
  The adjective TAINTED has 1 sense:

1. touched by rot or decay

  Familiarity information: TAINTED used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TAINTED (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Touched by rot or decay

Synonyms:

corrupt; tainted

Context example:

'corrupt' is archaic

Similar:

stale (lacking freshness, palatability, or showing deterioration from age)

 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 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)

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)

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)

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)