Word.ws English Dictionary

contaminating

contaminating is the present participle and gerund of contaminate.

Meaning of contaminate

Verb

contaminate (third-person singular simple present contaminates, present participle contaminating, simple past and past participle contaminated)

  1. (transitive) To make something dangerous or toxic by introducing impurities or foreign matter.
    • This water is contaminated. It isn't safe to drink.
    Synonyms:
    poison, pollute, taint
  2. (transitive) To soil, stain, corrupt, or infect by contact or association.
    • Shall we now
      Contaminate our figures with base bribes?1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    Synonyms:
    defile, pollute, sully, assoil, beclart, bedaub, bedirty, imbrue (especially with blood), bedizen, befile
  3. (transitive) To make unfit for use by the introduction of unwholesome or undesirable elements.
    • Do not contaminate the peanut butter with the jelly.
  4. (transitive) To infect, usually of a deadly virus.
    Synonyms:
    disease, leper

See all 6 meanings of contaminate

Words formed from contaminating

Questions about contaminating

What is contaminating the present participle and gerund of?
Contaminating is the present participle and gerund of contaminate.

Words near contaminating in the dictionary

  1. contaminant
  2. contaminants
  3. contaminate
  4. contaminated
  5. contaminates
  6. contaminating
  7. contamination
  8. contaminations
  9. contaminative
  10. contaminatively
  11. contaminator

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: contaminating (page history and authors); contaminate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “contaminating.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/contaminating. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.