tainture
tainture noun: dirtiness; uncleanliness; contamination, tainting.
Noun
tainture (plural taintures)
- Dirtiness; uncleanliness; contamination, tainting.
- Gloster, ſee here the Taincture of thy Neſt,
And looke thy ſelfe be faultleſſe, thou wert beſt.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and... - Dem[etrius]. Now Princes, your demands?
Sel[eucus]. Peace, if it may bee
Without the too much tainture of our honour: […]1619, John Fletcher, “The Humorous Lieutenant”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act III, scene vi, page 135...
- Gloster, ſee here the Taincture of thy Neſt,
Forms of tainture
| plural | taintures |
|---|
Origin of tainture
Perhaps taint + -ure; perhaps from Middle French tainture (“dye; dyeing; tincture”). Doublet of teinture, tinctura, and tincture.
Questions about tainture
- What does tainture mean?
- Tainture means dirtiness; uncleanliness; contamination, tainting.
- What part of speech is tainture?
- Tainture is a noun.
- What is the plural of tainture?
- The plural of tainture is taintures.
Words near tainture in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tainture (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: “tainture.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tainture. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.