Meanings
- not comparableIntentionally tainted with impurities (usually as motivated by cheapening the production of a food product or enhancing the psychotropic effects of a street drug).
Heroin is often adulterated with fentanyl.
3 more examples
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.
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 2022Synonyms: laced, tainted, contaminated, common, contaminated, corrupted, mixed, polluted
- participlepastsimple past and past participle of adulterate
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveIntentionally tainted with impurities (usually as motivated by cheapening the production of a food product or enhancing the psychotropic effects of a street drug).
More synonyms by meaning
adjectivemixed with impurities
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
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.
Full word history & related roots →Translations
German gepanscht
- gepanschtTranslations
Spanish adulterado
- adulteradoTranslations
Turkish karışık, mağşuş
- karışıkTranslations
- mağşuşTranslations
- mahlutTranslations
Cite this entry
adulterated. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/adulterated
“adulterated.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/adulterated. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “adulterated,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/adulterated.
Source: adulterated on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.