Adulterations

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act or process of making a substance poorer in quality by adding another substance; alterations that compromise purity or integrity; the introduction of impurities or contaminants into a product or solution
2. Modifications that result in a decline in quality due to the addition of foreign materials; any changes that affect the initial condition or standards of a product; the addition of inferior materials that degrade the original substance
3. The act of mixing a substance with inferior components to reduce its quality; changes that affect the original state or efficacy of a product; the process of introducing unwanted impurities into a mixture or composition

Etymology: "Adulterations" is the plural of "adulteration," and the noun traces back to Latin "adulterātiō," a word built on the verb "adulterare." That verb meant "to corrupt" or "to tamper with," and its core sense came from "ad-" ("to") plus "alter" ("other"), suggesting a thing shifted toward something else. The idea of tampering with something to make it other than it should be is the thread that runs from the Roman verb to the modern noun. The English noun came to us through Middle French "adulteration," which carried the Latin form into the language with its sense of corrupting a substance by mixing in something that does not belong. Its formation is a straightforward one: the verb "adulterate" plus the suffix "-ion," which turns an action into a noun naming that action or its result.

Synonyms: impurities, contaminations, alterations, dilutions, falsifications

Antonyms: purity, clarity, integrity, wholeness, authenticity