taint
IPA: tˈeɪnt
noun
- A contamination, decay or putrefaction, especially in food.
- A tinge, trace or touch.
- A mark of disgrace, especially on one's character; blemish.
- (obsolete) Tincture; hue; colour.
- (obsolete) Infection; corruption; deprivation.
- (programming) A marker indicating that a variable is unsafe and should be subjected to additional security checks.
- A thrust with a lance, which fails of its intended effect.
- An injury done to a lance in an encounter, without its being broken; also, a breaking of a lance in an encounter in a dishonorable or unscientific manner.
- (US, vulgar, slang) The perineum.
- February 22 2010, Duchamanos, “Re: Huck Finn 2010-anyone going?”, in rec.sport.disc (Usenet):
- 2017, John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, HBO:
verb
- (transitive) To contaminate or corrupt (something) with an external agent, either physically or morally.
- (transitive) To spoil (food) by contamination.
- (intransitive) To be infected or corrupted; to be touched by something corrupting.
- (intransitive) To be affected with incipient putrefaction.
- (transitive, computing, programming) To mark (a variable) as unsafe, so that operations involving it are subject to additional security checks.
- (transitive, Australia, finance) To invalidate (a share capital account) by transferring profits into it.
- (transitive) To damage, as a lance, without breaking it; also, to break, as a lance, but usually in an unknightly or unscientific manner.
- (intransitive) To thrust ineffectually with a lance.
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Examples of "taint" in Sentences
- His hand was tainted with blood.
- Oak Lawn politics taint everything.
- Outside groups taint Michigan's history.
- Consider the tale of the tainted berries.
- The process has been irreparably tainted.
- In reality, he is the tainted Lord of the Flies.
- Never letting their hearts be defiled by the taint.
- The truer it is the more it would taint the result.
- Everyone knows that the scholarship of the USSR is tainted.
- A black and immeasurable taint is communicated to all who view it.
- The neutrality of this part of the article is unquestionably tainted.
- There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them.
- Eyes may be the windows to the soul, but a taint is the doggie-door to pain.
- One definition in the OED of the verb to taint is "to accuse of crime or dishonour."
- But the taint is also spreading to the city itself, which is being portrayed in an unflattering and unsettling way.
- One challenge in taint tracking is making it efficient, and the TaintDroid team focused a lot of work on using as few CPU cycles as possible.
- Could be wrong: perhaps sexist roots in a word taint it even if it has a different meaning, but my opinion is that that use of “hysterical” is okay.
- There is a young lady to accompany this gentleman, but she is even more loth [missing one letter] han himself to burden your Excellency with what she calls the taint of the rebel.