Adulterine
//əˈdʌltəɹaɪn// adj, noun
adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 One born of an adulterous union. rare
Adjective
- 1 Spurious; due to adulteration.
"a knave apothecary, that administers the physick, and makes the medicine, may do infinite harm, by his old obsolete doses, adulterine druggs, bad mixtures, quid pro quo, &c."
- 2 Born of adultery.
- 3 Pertaining to adultery.
- 4 Illegal; unlicensed.
"when any particular class of artificers or traders thought proper to act as a corporation without a charter , such adulterine guilds , as they were called , were not always disfranchised[…]"
Adjective
- 1 conceived in adultery wordnet
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"a knave apothecary, that administers the physick, and makes the medicine, may do infinite harm, by his old obsolete doses, adulterine druggs, bad mixtures, quid pro quo, &c."
Etymology
From Latin adulterīnus.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.