maculate
Americanadjective
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spotted; stained.
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Archaic. defiled; impure.
verb (used with object)
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to mark with a spot or spots; stain.
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to sully or pollute.
verb
adjective
Etymology
Origin of maculate
1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin maculātus (past participle of maculāre to spot, stain). See macula, -ate 1
Explanation
If your little sister has a maculate appearance, she either needs a good wipe with a damp towel or you should take her to the doctor straight away. A fairly technical word little used now, maculate means "spotted" or "blotchy." There's another meaning for maculate, that of "having a blemished or impure moral character." Now your little sister doesn't have that, does she? You can also maculate something by either physically or metaphorically polluting it — like a river or a relationship.
Vocabulary lists containing maculate
100 SAT Words Beginning with "M"
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Love's Labour's Lost
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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.
See Examples For:
Among the robin's maculate cousins, "the reddish tail is the hermit thrush's mark."
From Time Magazine Archive
But his limitations were a virtue because his target was so big -- and so maculate.
From Time Magazine Archive
His wasted palms rested on knees that resembled bones draped with maculate clothing; his sere head fell forward.
From The Happy End by Joseph Hergesheimer
The room was long, dark, narrow, slovenly, spaced with tables on which were maculate cloths and lamps with faded shades.
From The Paliser case by Edgar Saltus
Of this half-hundred a few are used in Shakespeare, but not at present, as verbs; thus, to maculate, to miracle, to mud, to mist, to mischief, to moral—also merchandized and musicked.
From Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880. by Various
That done, he returned, happily unrecognized, rumpled & maculated, to the Morrow dinner.
From Time Magazine Archive
But the pace was now so fast and their elevation so great that the landscape swimming beneath his vision was no more than a brownish plain fugitively maculated with blots of contrasting colour.
From The Lone Wolf A Melodrama by Louis Joseph Vance
This was a particularly repulsive specimen of its breed; grimy with hardened dust and gummed oil, maculated with yellow-surface-rust, the brasswork green with corrosion.
From Murder in the Gunroom by H. Beam Piper
Back in the ages, dusty, maculated, Across the slate-hued fogs of time, Behold them!—oblongs of sliding water And cubed banks, Bridges and barges, blatantly, wonderfully, inconceivably angular, Calling, clamouring—canal, canal, canal!
From Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 by Various
Ten priests, in white vestments, maculated with red, stepped out to the centre of the altar.
From Sulamith: A Romance of Antiquity by A. I. (Aleksandr Ivanovich) Kuprin
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