maculate
Americanadjective
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spotted; stained.
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Archaic. defiled; impure.
verb (used with object)
-
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
From this black hour, this curse anointing hour, The currents of thy heart are all corrupt; The motions of thy thoughts are serpentine; And thy death-doing and bedabbled soul Is maculate with spots of Erebus.
From The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 by Various
Colette's foul walls and maculate table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare.
From Tales and Fantasies by Stevenson, Robert Louis
His wasted palms rested on knees that resembled bones draped with maculate clothing; his sere head fell forward.
From The Happy End by Hergesheimer, Joseph
That done, he returned, happily unrecognized, rumpled & maculated, to the Morrow dinner.
From Time Magazine Archive
The posters, maculated with filth, garnished like tapestry the sweep of the curbstone.
From The Secret Agent a Simple Tale by Conrad, Joseph
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 Piper, H. Beam
Blake saw the crimson that dripped on her matting slippers and maculated the cream white of the mandarin coat.
From Never-Fail Blake by Stringer, Arthur
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 Vance, Louis Joseph
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.
