adulterated

English

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.

Adjective

adulterated (not comparable)

  1. Intentionally tainted with impurities (usually as motivated by cheapening the production of a food product or enhancing the psychotropic effects of a street drug).
    Near-synonyms: laced, tainted, 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.
    • 2011 December 18, Jay Rayner, “Restaurant review: Aurelia”, in The Observer[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 15 August 2022:
      A thin, crunchy lemon and thyme rosti was essentially the pimped-up aesthetic of the Kettle chip. That's OK. I like Kettle chips.

Translations

Verb

adulterated

  1. simple past and past participle of adulterate