| adulterate | |
| —vb | |
| 1. | (tr) to debase by adding inferior material: to adulterate milk with water |
| —adj | |
| 2. | adulterated; debased or impure |
| 3. | a less common word for adulterous |
| [C16: from Latin adulterāre to corrupt, commit adultery, probably from alter another, hence to approach another, commit adultery] | |
| adulter'ation | |
| —n | |
| a'dulterator | |
| —n | |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| a fool or simpleton; ninny. |
adulteration a·dul·ter·a·tion (ə-dŭl'tə-rā'shən)
n.
The alteration, especially the debasement, of a substance by deliberately adding something not ordinarily a part of it.