Contaminated

How to spell contaminated

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce contaminated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does contaminated mean?

1. adjectiveMade impure, unsafe, or polluted by contact with a harmful or unwanted substance.
2. verbMade something impure or unsafe by introducing a polluting or infectious substance.

Contaminated in a sentence

• adjective

  The lab confirmed that the well water was contaminated with lead.

• verb

  A single leaking drum contaminated the entire river downstream.

• adjective

  Workers in protective suits removed the contaminated soil from the site.

• verb

  Investigators believe the spill contaminated the food supply within hours.

Where does contaminated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb contaminare, which meant 'to render impure by mixing' or 'to defile'. That verb was built on contamen, an older noun for 'contact' or 'contagion', which in turn traces back to the root of tangere, the Latin for 'to touch'. The underlying idea is vivid and concrete: something becomes spoiled because it has touched, or been touched by, something foul. English took the verb 'contaminate' from Latin in the early 1400s, originally with the sense of moral or physical defilement, and the modern meanings of pollution and infection grew naturally from that. The same tangere root quietly survives in everyday relatives such as 'contact', 'tangible', and 'contagion', and remembering that 'touch' connection helps fix the single n and the -tamin- in the middle of the spelling.

How the word is built

• con- (with, together)
• -tamin- (from Latin contaminare, ultimately tangere 'to touch')
• -ate (verb)
• -ed (past/participle)