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Contaminating   Listen
adjective
contaminating  adj.  
1.
Spreading contamination; especially radioactive contamination. Antonym: clean.
Synonyms: dirty.
2.
Causing moral or behavioral degredation. "The contaminating influence of violent movies"
Synonyms: corrupting.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contaminating" Quotes from Famous Books



... "Well-named!—dirty, smeary, contaminating business," said Croyden. "And the best 'greasers' have the best places, I reckon. I prefer the unadorned garb of the civilian—and independence. I'll permit those fellows to fight the battles and draw the rewards—they can do ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott

... as yours. Well, 't was my fault—one should be accurate— Jews, said I? when I meant Jews, Jewesses, And Jewlings! all betwixt the age Of twenty-four hours, and of five score years. Of either sex, of every known degree, All the contaminating vermin purged With one clean, searching ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... applause by the very men who had been striving to save the pulpit from all contaminating contact with politics, and the reverend preachers of cotton politics were elevated into patriots, and their disquisitions against the "higher law" were scattered on the wings of the commercial press broadcast over the land.[2] The theology which holds that the allegiance we owe to civil government ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock

... would not of themselves constitute a very peculiar case against the English language; but their addition to the main list does very much strengthen the case. One intention in isolating them from the main list was to prevent their contaminating it with their weaker quality; but their separate classification crosses and sometimes overrides that more general distinction. Section iv has some literary interest; vi is inconsistent; the other sections are more or ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... steeped in blood and filth, and swarming with vermin. To obtain shirts and towels was hard work, because it had to be proved that they brought none with them. They were laid on the floor in the corridors, as close as they could be packed, thus breathing and contaminating the air which was to have refreshed the wards within. If laid upon so-called sheets, they entreated that the sheets might be taken away; for they were of coarse canvas, intolerable to the skin. Before the miserable company could be fed, made clean, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... the Book which all Christendom venerates, and the Book tells me that the sin of the father shall be visited on the child. I look out into the world, and I see the living witnesses round me to that terrible truth. I see the vices which have contaminated the father descending, and contaminating the child; I see the shame which has disgraced the father's name descending, and disgracing the child's. I look in on myself, and I see my crime ripening again for the future in the self-same circumstance ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... friend," replied the empress, "to protect the youth of Austria from such contaminating influences. Why do those whom I appointed censors of the press permit the introduction of these godless works ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... and encompassed by a massive stone wall, and the east side being on a level with Broadway, it results that this body of earth, the surface of which has no declivity to carry off the rain, thus becomes a great reservoir of contaminating fluids suspended above the adjacent streets. In proof of this, it is stated that, in a house in Thames Street, springs of water pouring in from that ground occasioned the removal of the tenants on account of their exceeding fetidness." At a later date, Dr. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... jolly and I can't deny that I have been outrageously frivolous for a missionary! But to save my life I can't conjure up the ghost of a regret! And what is more, I have been contaminating Dixie! I have kept her in such a giddy whirl that she says I have paralysed her conscience! I have dressed her up and trotted her along to lunches, teas and dinners, to concerts on sea and land, and once, Oh! awful confession, I bulldozed her into going to the theatre! The consequence ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... centres of splendid circles, diffusing all around them pleasure and gayety. And men, themselves unstained, have been won by these fascinations to a close association with those whose principles were worthy only of reprobation, and whose association should have been shunned as in the last degree contaminating. ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... of the Gospel of Christ, under the conviction that it would prove the surest and most fruitful source of social improvement and civilization, as well as of spiritual blessings infinitely more valuable, and would be found the only effectual antidote to the contaminating vices which a rapidly-increasing trade, especially with California and Oregon, is bringing in ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... one more monstrous, deceitful, and contaminating than that. It is the religion which teaches that the soul of man is purified by a few magical words (called absolution), which come from the lips of a miserable sinner, whose heart and intelligence have just been filled by the unmentionable impurities of Dens, Liguori, Debreyne, Kenrick, &c., &c. ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... Irishwoman, involuntarily putting out her hands as if she would snatch her infant from such a contaminating hold. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... penal settlement was therefore broken up in 1855, and convicts are now confined in different establishments in the United Kingdom, where, without subjecting them to absolute silence or solitude, they are separated from the contaminating society of each other. Under the present system, it is a fixed principle never to allow, if at all possible, the punishment—while it may be made to any extent disagreeable—to injure either the body ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... component parts—a foundation: a girdle apparently to bind together and tie on the head; and a decoration. Straw, silk and some kind of unreal flowers. Was that all? He stooped down and picked the thing up with the tips of his fingers, held it at arms length as though it were contaminating, and examined the inside. Ah! There was another element in its construction, a sort of frill of something thin,—hardly lace,—more like the foam of a cloud. He touched the tulle clumsily with his thumb and finger and then he dropped the bonnet back into the corner again. He ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... them during their growth, from the fertilizer that may be used on the soil, from flies and other insects that may crawl over them, and from being stored, displayed, or sold in surroundings where they may be exposed to the dirt from streets and other contaminating sources. Because of the possibility of all these sources of contamination, it is essential that fruits that are not to be cooked be thoroughly washed before they are eaten. It is true that a certain amount of flavor or food material may be lost from the washing, but this is of little ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... regulations of the evening. While the lawyer was urging her to this, a thoughtless young man of the company stepped up to them and placed a few cards in her hand. She jerked her hand away, and gave it a sling as if to rid it of the contaminating filth of the cards; and, with an agonizing scream, she began weeping and sobbing as if her heart ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... of life a hideous blind alley. Can any argument be more plain? Can any lesson be more salutary? "Under every guilty secret," writes the author, with her usual felicity, "there is a hidden brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome, infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires,—the enlistment of self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the purifying influence of public confession springs from the fact, that by it the hope in lies is forever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... any account, whilst still applying his eye to the ocular, rack the body tube down (for by so doing there is every likelihood of the front lens of the objective being forced through the cover-glass, and not only spoiling the specimen, but also contaminating the objective); but, on the contrary, withdraw his eye, rack the tube up, and commence again ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... leave the room. Beatrice, in the meantime, who has been rating her parent for his cruelty, is subjected to every species of insult; and he sends her to her own apartment, with the hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces us to a tete-a-tete between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... would stake my soul that it is. My dear mother is an angel in heaven; I am certain of that; for I have seen her in my dreams ever since I can remember. But yet—but yet—why did they all recoil from me? Even she—even Claudia Merlin shrank from me as from something unclean and contaminating, when Alfred called me that name. If they had not thought there was some truth in the charge, would they all have recoiled from me so? Would she have shrunk from me as if I had had the plague? Oh, no! Oh, no! And then Aunt ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... in his way, and sorely troubled by the demoralised state of his men, who appear not to have been proof against the contaminating presence of the Arabs, the Doctor ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... eighteenth century; its design was taken from a monastery. The idea passed from Rome to the Puritans of Pennsylvania; and it has now taken root in all parts of the civilised world. The believers in the cellular system say that it prevents prisoners from contaminating each other; it prevents the hardened criminal from getting hold of the comparative novice; according to this system, although the offender is in a prison, the only persons he is permitted to speak to are those ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison



Words linked to "Contaminating" :   dirty, clean



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