Both Uses of
taint
in
A Soldier of the Great War
- The soldiers lined up at the water casks and drank deeply of the warm and tainted water that would not have tasted better had it been from a numbing alpine spring.
Chpt 5 *tainted = spoiled or contaminated
- He would not eat anything that had been tainted with blood, and was left with less than a third of his rations.†
Chpt 7
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.