3 uses
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? —1 use
exact meaning not specified
Definition
to spoil something so it is not desirable — as when bacteria contaminates a food; or as when a rumor makes people distrust a person
- Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance — how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint.Chapter 20 (90% in)
taint = anything that spoils them
There are no more uses of "taint" flagged with this meaning in Jane Eyre.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
? —2 uses
exact meaning not specified
- Well then, Jane, call to aid your fancy:— suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence.Chapter 20 (86% in)
- ...were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house — from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me — to that sky expanded before me, — a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and...Chapter 12 (89% in)
There are no more uses of "taint" in Jane Eyre.
Typical Usage
(best examples)