adulterates

"That's why adultery is called adultery - because it 'adulterates', which literally means to make something poorer in quality by adding another substance," Bel Mooney recently scolded an unfaithful husband who had rashly written to her for guidance.

The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed 2008

She also adulterates the materials with lipstick, glitter hairspray and baby oil.

Saatchi's Newspeak: the good, bad and indifferent 2010

It is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory.

Ted Marcel Inhoff 2009

If milk processing damages and adulterates the milk, should it be given preferential nod by health and medical professionals?

FDA Response to Raw Milk Symposium in Toronto��a Symposium of their Own 2009

Despite the delays, dangers and costs of maintaining an iconic, though architecturily dubious structure, this renovation plan adulterates a Paris point of reference by day, and the spendor of the 20,000 light display at night.

A Plan to Temporarily Alter Eiffel Tower’s Silhouette - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com 2008

The rest of us form our opinions from the New York Times or hearing from some college friends who's pals w/someone at the Defense Department, and right away that adulterates the conclusions by inserting gossip and hearsay.

freakophilosophy 2006

Bayesian 'suggested the implausible image of a process that gets the correct answer, then adulterates it with a bias.

Daniel Kahneman - Autobiography 2003

I thus aimed to avoid padding, which is the almost inevitable penalty of trying to put Pushkin into English verse and which inevitably adulterates his quality, and which I believe I avoided completely when I later translated the whole of The Bronze Horseman.

The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov Wilson, Edmund 1965

True judgement would teach us to conclude, that the best druggs have their adulterates; the most current coins their slipps; and that vertue which so many hypocrites put on, to grace themselves withall; is surely some rare and excellent jewell.

A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich Samuel Ward

There is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if any where, you find the pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil of the artist serves to bring out in stronger lustre, indeed, but likewise adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood.

Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Being Selections from the Chief American Writers Benj. N. Martin