contamination
Americannoun
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the act of contaminating, or of making something impure or unsuitable by contact with something unclean, bad, etc.
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the act of contaminating, or of rendering something harmful or unusable by the addition of radioactive material.
the contamination of food following a nuclear attack.
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the state of being contaminated.
The manufacturer recalled the product because of possible salmonella contamination.
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Rare. something that contaminates a place or substance, as by making it impure, unsuitable, harmful, or unusable; a contaminant.
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Linguistics.
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an alternation in a linguistic form due to the influence of a related form, as the replacement in English of earlier femelle with female through the influence of male.
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the process of forming blends.
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noun
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the act or process of contaminating or the state of being contaminated
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something that contaminates
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linguistics the process by which one word or phrase is altered because of mistaken associations with another word or phrase; for example, the substitution of irregardless for regardless by association with such words as irrespective
Other Word Forms
- noncontamination noun
- recontamination noun
- self-contamination noun
Etymology
Origin of contamination
1375–1425; late Middle English contaminacioun < Late Latin contāminātiōn- (stem of contāminātiō ), equivalent to contāmināt ( us ) ( contaminate ) + -iōn- -ion
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"Our results suggest that beliefs about water safety may actually contribute to contamination because people don't take the same hygienic steps with sources they trust that they might with other less trusted sources," Ramay said.
From Science Daily
"It would not be explosive, and it could be stretched out over time, but the contamination could be greater!"
From BBC
"I flew the drone to measure radiation and heavy-metal contamination around the uranium processing plant there," the man, identified as Oh, said in a recent interview with broadcaster Channel A.
From Barron's
When soil contamination still exceeded state benchmarks after the initial cleanup, the state government redeployed cleanup workers to remove more dirt and then retest the properties.
From Los Angeles Times
A week later, the company concluded that multiple batches would likely need to be discarded due to contamination issues.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
