Both Uses of
taint
in
The Picture of Dorian Gray - 13 chapter version
- Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette.†
Chpt 1 *tainted = spoiled or contaminated
- To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.†
Chpt 9
Definitions:
-
(1)
(taint) to spoil something so it is not desirable -- as when bacteria contaminates a food; or as when a rumor makes people distrust a person
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, taint is used in a non-negative way to refer to a trace of something.