maculate
Americanadjective
-
spotted; stained.
-
Archaic. defiled; impure.
verb (used with object)
-
to mark with a spot or spots; stain.
-
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"
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
Love's Labour's Lost
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
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
But they had no history to be written; and were too closely maculate to be portrayed;—white ground in most places altogether obscured.
From Ariadne Florentina Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving by John Ruskin
V. be variegated &c. adj.; variegate, stripe, streak, checker, chequer; bespeckle†, speckle; besprinkle, sprinkle; stipple, maculate, dot, bespot†; tattoo, inlay, damascene; embroider, braid, quilt.
From Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases by Peter Mark Roget
In the maculate atmosphere of flat wine and stale cologne he had a sharp recurrence of the scent of pines, lifting warmly in sunny space.
From The Three Black Pennys A Novel by Joseph Hergesheimer
That done, he returned, happily unrecognized, rumpled & maculated, to the Morrow dinner.
From Time Magazine Archive
Our specimen of the Sharp-shinned Hawk is referred to velox on the basis of the reddish, maculated breast, sides, and thighs.
From Birds from Coahuila, Mexico by Emil K. Urban
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
A few drops of lukewarm water maculated the sidewalks with spots as big as dollars.
From Joan Thursday by Louis Joseph Vance
For, instead of a siliceous ground, maculated with the rhombic feld-spar, which is the common state of porphyry, the ground is uniformly crystallised, or a homogeneous regular feld-spar, maculated with the transparent siliceous substance.
From Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) by James Hutton
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.
