All 3 Uses of
taint
in
The Souls of Black Folk
- On the tainted air broods fear.†
Chpt 2 *tainted = spoiled or contaminated
- Her ancient university foundations dwindled and withered under the foul breath of slavery; and even since the war they have fought a failing fight for life in the tainted air of social unrest and commercial selfishness, stunted by the death of criticism, and starving for lack of broadly cultured men.†
Chpt 5
- It was not and is not money these seething millions want, but love and sympathy, the pulse of hearts beating with red blood;—a gift which to-day only their own kindred and race can bring to the masses, but which once saintly souls brought to their favored children in the crusade of the sixties, that finest thing in American history, and one of the few things untainted by sordid greed and cheap vainglory.†
Chpt 6untainted = 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.
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.