Ataint

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To stain or corrupt someone's honor or reputation ; to formally condemn a person for treason or another grave offense
2. To sully the good name of a person or thing ; to pronounce someone guilty of a major crime and strip them of rights
3. To spoil the dignity of someone or something ; to find a person legally guilty of treason or a serious wrongdoing

Etymology: Before it meant "stained," this word meant "struck" or "reached." It comes from Anglo-French "ataint," the past participle of "ataindre," which descends from Latin "attingere," "to touch upon." The Latin verb combined "ad-" (to) with "tangere" (to touch), so the core idea was physical contact. The sense of harm arrived through that idea of touching. Medieval English used the same family of forms in two senses: to reach or affect someone, and in law, to condemn, as in "attainder," the loss of civil rights after conviction. From there the meaning of being contaminated or stained by contact grew naturally. Over time, the shorter form "taint," a clipped version of "attaint," took over most of the stain sense, while "ataint" survived mainly as an archaic variant.