All 3 Uses of
taint
in
City of Bones
- She would make a new life for herself and her baby, and she wanted no whisper of Clave or Covenant ever to taint her future.
Chpt 21 *taint = spoil or contaminate
- All that stuff he was spouting about keeping the human race pure and the importance of untainted blood—he was like one of those creepy white power guys.†
Chpt 22untainted = not spoiled or contaminatedstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in untainted means not and reverses the meaning of tainted. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- After all your talk about the untainted blood of the Clave—you didn't care at all about their blood or their innocence when you killed them, did you?†
Chpt 23
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) Much more rarely, taint is used in a non-negative way to refer to a trace of something.