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Contaminate   /kəntˈæmənˌeɪt/   Listen
Contaminate

verb
(past & past part. contaminated; pres. part. contaminating)
1.
Make impure.  Synonyms: foul, pollute.
2.
Make radioactive by adding radioactive material.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Contaminate" Quotes from Famous Books



... avoided as much as possible. They should never be constructed near to dwellings, and must always be well ventilated. Care should be taken to make them watertight, otherwise the foul matter may percolate through the ground, and is likely to contaminate the water supply. In some old houses cesspools have been found actually under ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various

... returned. "I congratulate you upon the manner in which you have trained your servants!" He ignored Dunlavey and smiled at Norton. "Mr. Norton," he said with polite mockery, "I feel certain that you agree with me that we have no wish to contaminate this temple of ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer

... He is so fond of me that he imagines—he imagines that you are going to contaminate us with your atheism, your disregard for public opinion, your strange ideas. I have told him repeatedly that, at bottom, you are an ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... not be heated to complete fusion, since a slight loss by volatilization is possible at high temperatures. The temperature of fusion is not always sufficient to destroy filter shreds; hence these should not be allowed to contaminate the precipitate.] ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... of it, I always expect to find in him a soul which would not hesitate long, in the day of temptation, to stoop to vicious if not base actions. Who would despise the fountain at which he is refreshed daily? Above all, who would willingly contaminate it? But how much better than this is it to show by our language, as well as deeds, that we hold this portion of the world in disdain; and only meet with them, if we meet them at all, to comply with custom, or for purposes still more unworthy; instead of seeking their society as a ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... twoo strong fortes and holdes of their common libertie. Is authoritie geuen thee, libidinously to abuse our wyues and children? Exercise thy crueltie behinde our backes, and vppon our lives if thou liste, so that thou doe not contaminate and defile the vertue of chastitie. Whereunto if thou inferre any damage or iniurie, I will for mine owne parte, and for the loue of my beloued, crie out for the ayde of the Romaines that be present, and Virginius shall do the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... the means of turning him from the error of his ways—he and the chaplain between them, anyhow. He even helped him to be allowed to be kept a little separate from the other prisoners (lest they should contaminate him!), and in lots of ways made his life a bit ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... know what foreigners are, how they work for evil in places high and low. One cannot take up a daily paper without seeing some exposure of their many-sided viciousness. They contaminate the land with their godless depravity. Nobody can count on immunity. The highest officials in the land, the very Ministers of the Crown, are subjected to their vile disguised attempts at bribery and corruption, no humble peasant ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... he only alluded, indirectly but earnestly, to the "step." He disapproved of it altogether, took an unexpectedly prudent, politic view of it. He evidently also believed that she would be dragged down; in other words that she would not be asked out. It was his idea that her mother would contaminate her, so that he should find himself interested in a young person discredited and virtually unmarriageable. All this was more obvious to him than the consideration that a daughter should be merciful. Where was his religion if he understood mercy so little, and where were his talent and his ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James

... used in opposition to clear, and implies entangled, embarrassed, or contrary to: as "a ship ran foul of us," that is, entangled herself among our rigging. Also, to contaminate in any way. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... and of progressive civilization for the nations of Europe. Here and everywhere I have written the best I know how against the vices of materialism, of egotism, of reaction, and against the destructive tendencies which contaminate many of our party. If the people should rise in violent attack against the selfishness and bad government of their rulers, I, while rendering homage to the right of the people, shall be among the first to prevent the excesses and the vengeance ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Antonio, New Mexico, a town 28 kilometers northwest of the Guard Post. The Base Commander had noted that portions of the cloud were heading northwestward and, fearing that fallout from the cloud would contaminate Guard Post 2, had ordered the military police to evacuate. The chief monitor, however, had found no significant radiation levels anywhere along the northern part of Broadway nor around Guard Post 2. The Base Commander, after being contacted by the chief monitor, drove to the foxholes ...
— Project Trinity 1945-1946 • Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer

... the black staircase redolent of boiled cabbage, she reflected that these surroundings were going to contaminate the sad pleasure that she planned to obtain through Parr. Her instinctive epicureanism demanded that the scene of these evocations ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... cultivate reflection and stimulate to virtue. For this reason, women are more pious than men; and for this reason, too, they are more eminent in purity. Contact with the domestic circle does not contaminate or corrupt, as the baser contact with the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... a port of entry for this obnoxious merchandise, simply because it was a little town, and could not keep English ships out of its waters. A meeting of the patriotic citizens was held, and it was resolved that no tea should go out of Greenwich to comfort the bodies and contaminate the principles of people in any part of the Colonies; and they would show their British tyrants that it was just as unsafe to send tea into Cohansey Creek as it was to send it ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... Wimp's attentions, not so much perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs. Drabdump liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not contaminate their skirts by contact with the lower castes. "It's set wet, it'll rain right into the new year," she announced. "And they say a bad beginnin' makes a worse endin'." Mrs. Drabdump was one of those persons who give you the idea that they ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... continually recedes from him—and thus, let him learn, travel, and collect as he may, he must always live an exiled life at a remote distance from a higher life and from true culture. For true culture would scorn to contaminate itself with the needy and covetous individual; it well knows how to give the slip to the man who would fain employ it as a means of attaining to egoistic ends; and if any one cherishes the belief that he has firmly secured ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... nevertheless supervene. Whence it appears that the contagion impressed upon or deposited in a particular part, is by-and-by carried by the returning current of blood to the heart, and by that organ is sent to contaminate the whole body. ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... was not gained without some sacrifice of his spiritual character, and the "secular" Brahmin had to bow, quoad sacra, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple, or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts without which a marriage, "thread ceremony" or funeral in a gentleman's house could not be respectably ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... Cas. Chastisement! Bru. Remember March, the ides of March remember! Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? What villain touched his body, that did stab, And not for justice? What! shall one of us, That struck the foremost man of all this world But for supporting robbers; shall we now Contaminate our fingers with base bribes, And sell the mighty space of our large honors For so much trash as may be graspe'd thus? I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, Than such a Roman. Cas. Brutus, bay not me; I'll not endure it: you forget yourself, To hedge me in; I am a soldier, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... construction, and coincides with the rest of the passage,—"I am contaminate through thee, though in ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... ruinous vice. Eric Williams and Charles Wildney, your punishment will be public expulsion, for which you will prepare this very evening. I am unwilling that for a single day either of you—especially the elder of you—should linger, so as possibly to contaminate others with the danger of so ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... necessary, then, to remove it from the house. But it ought not to be burned, for in this way the fire would be polluted; it should not be buried, for so is the soil defiled; nor is it to be drowned, and thus contaminate the water. These dispositions of the corpse would bring permanent pollution. The Persians resorted to a different method. The body with face toward the sun was exposed in an elevated place and ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... am not sure that I do not agree with Mrs. Proudie in thinking that dancing would contaminate a conversazione. What are your ideas, Miss Grantly?" Griselda was never very good at a joke, and imagined that Lord Lufton wanted to escape the trouble of dancing with her. This angered her. For the only ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... sheepskin, painted all over with devils and the portraits of their own faces surrounded by flames. These poor creatures wore also flame-adorned caps called corozas, shaped like bishops' mitres, and were gagged with blocks of wood, lest they should contaminate the populace by some declaration of their heresy, while in their hands they bore tapers, which the monks who accompanied them relighted from time to ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... hundred thousand dollars—not to save my very life would I do such a dastardly thing! You have made a mistake in your man! Take back your dirty money! I would not touch a dollar of it for the world! It would contaminate me!" ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... (sacerdotium Flaviae gentis). The exculpation is given by Constantine himself in his address of thanks to the Hispellates: "We are pleased and grateful for your determination to raise a temple in honor of our family and of ourselves; and we accept it, provided you do not contaminate it with superstitious practices." The honor of a temple and of a priesthood, therefore, was offered and accepted as a political demonstration, as an act of loyalty, and as an occasion for public festivities, both ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... blameless career up to the moment in which they are led to commit a crime by some isolated evil impulse, have a bad influence on the other inmates. Unlike other lunatics, they do not shrink from the company of others, whom they torment with their violence and contaminate with that spirit of restlessness and discontent which distinguished them even before they became insane or criminals. Firm in the belief that they are always being ill treated and insulted, they instil these ideas into their companions and suggest thoughts of flight ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... bespatter, debase, deprave, soil, stain, taint, besmear, contaminate, defile, pollute, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... alarming "race riots," it never occurred to the white man, that his wife and children were in danger of assault. Nor in the Reconstruction era, when the hue and cry was against "Negro Domination," was there ever a thought that the domination would ever contaminate a fireside or strike to death the virtue of womanhood. It must appear strange indeed, to every thoughtful and candid man, that more than a quarter of a century elapsed before the Negro began to show signs ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... the sky, invoked Lucifer, shouted his contempt of God, calling Him rogue and imbecile, spat upon the communion, endeavored to contaminate with vile ordures a Divinity who he prayed might damn him, the while he declared, to defy Him the more, that He ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... with that delicate, womanly tact which was one of her most marked characteristics, interrupted him as he was about to say something to the effect, "Miss Walton, since you are so much holier than I, it were better that I should contaminate the air you ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... dog, or worse," and her grey eyes filled with tears. "However, it is your father we are talking of, and there is no commandment telling me to honour him. I say I hate him and he hates me, and that's why he is sending you away. Well, I hope you won't find anyone to contaminate you in Switzerland." ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard

... serfs, debased by all sorts of servitude. Their priests, whom they are accustomed to believe, imposed upon them by delusive language; they persuaded these peasants that we were legions of devils, commanded by Antichrist, infernal spirits, whose very look would excite horror, and whose touch would contaminate. Such of our prisoners as fell into their hands, remarked that these poor creatures would not again make use of the vessels which they had used, and that they reserved them for the most ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... the sauce of the stew. "I can't afford to act otherwise than like I am a lady at one of them dinners, but the minute I'm home I beat it for the icebox. I suppose it's all right to be socially elegant, but we hadn't ought to let it contaminate our food none. And even at that New York hotel this summer you had to make trouble to get fed proper. I wanted strawberry shortcake, and what do you reckon they dealt me? A thing looking like a marble palace—sponge cake and whipped cream with a few ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole wide world there was ever one less ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... of the low lands will float over into and contaminate the pure air of the guarded pleasure gardens, and the evil germs will carry disease, crime and death, no matter how many fountains and white statutes and posies you may set up between. Envy, Discontent and Revenge will break ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... the man in whose house the priest was discovered generally shared his fate. But it was useless. They were hung, they were tortured, they were transported to Barbadoes, and, finally, such numbers were captured, that it was feared they would contaminate the very slaves, and they were confined on the island of Innisboffin, off the coast of Connemara. Yet more priests came to take the place of those who were thus removed, and the "hunt" ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... the chamber, "you have seen to-day the impotency of Issus—the gods are impotent. Issus is no god. She is a cruel and wicked old woman, who has deceived and played upon you for ages. Take her. John Carter, Prince of Helium, would not contaminate his hand with her blood," and with that I pushed the raving beast, whom a short half-hour before a whole world had worshipped as divine, from the platform of her throne into the waiting clutches of ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs



Words linked to "Contaminate" :   alter, colly, begrime, modify, contaminative, infect, soil, dirty, pollute, taint, grime, change, decontaminate, contaminant, contamination, bemire



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