adulterated
adjEtymology 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.
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; 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.
2 more examples
- 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.2011 December 18, Jay Rayner, “Restaurant review: Aurelia”, in The Observer, →ISSN, archived from the original on 15 Aug 2022:
- Derived terms
- nonadulterated, unadulterated
- Related terms
- adulterant