Other forms: adulterated, adulterating
To adulterate is to spoil something by adding an inferior substance. Adulterated milk, adulterate the wine, adulterated with chalk.
It always means adding something cheaper and hiding the fact, which is why it is a crime rather than a recipe. Victorian food was adulterated on a scale that is hard to believe — chalk in flour, lead in sweets — and food law grew up to stop it.
1verbadulterateTo spoil something by adding an inferior substance.
“Dishonest traders used to adulterate milk with water to make more money.”
adulterate is a spoiling.
Latin adulterare means to corrupt or falsify, from ad plus alter, other — to change a thing into something else.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂el- (other)
Latin
adulterātus — adulterate, adulterated, defiled, polluted, counterfeited
English, today
adulterate
Built from
From Latin adulterātus (“adulterate, adulterated, defiled, polluted, counterfeited”), perfect passive participle of adulterō (“to adulterate, defile, commit adultery (with), counterfeit”) (see -ate), from ad- + alter + -ō. Equivalent to adultery + -ate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA