adulterated
/ədˈʌltɚˌeɪtɪd/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.41 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
5
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Intentionally tainted with impurities (usually as motivated by cheapening the production of a food product or enhancing the psychotropic effects of a street drug).
verb
simple past and past participle of adulterate
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: laced, tainted, contaminated; see also Thesaurus:contaminated"
- "The problem of adulterated milk has periodically reemerged as a public health menace, from New York in the 1850s to China in 2008."
- "Heroin is often adulterated with fentanyl."
- "A thin, crunchy lemon and thyme rosti was essentially the pimped-up aesthetic of the Kettle chip. That's OK. I like Kettle chips."
Etymology
The adjectival sense's relation to adultery is the common theme that corruption or pollution has occurred; more at adulterate. By surface analysis, adulterate + -ed.