pollute

verb

1)

fish farms will pollute the lake

Syn:

contaminate, adulterate, taint, poison, foul, dirty, soil, infect; literary befoul

Ant:

purify

2)

propaganda polluted this nation

Syn:

corrupt, poison, warp, pervert, deprave, defile, blight, sully; literary besmirch

••

pollute, adulterate, contaminate, defile, taint

When a factory pours harmful chemicals or wastes into the air or water, it is said to pollute the environment. But pollute may also refer to impairing the purity, integrity, or effectiveness of something (a campaign polluted by allegations of sexual impropriety). To contaminate is to spread harmful or undesirable impurities throughout something; unlike pollute, which suggests visible or noticeable impurities, contaminate is preferred where the change is unsuspected or not immediately noticeable (milk contaminated by radioactive fallout from a nuclear plant accident). Adulterate often refers to food products to which harmful, low-quality, or low-cost substances have been added in order to defraud the consumer (cereal adulterated with sawdust), although this word can apply to any mixture to which the inferior or harmful element is added deliberately and in the hope that no one will notice (a report adulterated with false statistics). To defile is to pollute something that should be kept pure or sacred (a church defiled by vandals), while taint implies that a trace of something toxic or corrupt has been introduced (he contracted the disease from a tainted blood transfusion; the book is tainted by gratuitous violence).