Adu'lterate. v.a. [adulterer, Fr. adultero, Lat.]

1. To commit adultery.

                       But fortune, oh!
   Adulterates hourly with thine uncle John;
   And with her golden hand hath pluckt on France. Shakesp. King John.

2. To corrupt by some foreign admixture; to contaminate.

   Common pot-ashes, bought of them that sell it in shops, who are not so foolishly knavish, as to adulterate them with salt-petre, which is much dearer than pot-ashes. Boyle.

   Could a man be composed to such an advantage of constitution, that it should not at all adulterate the images of his mind; yet this second nature would alter the crasis of his understanding. Glanville's Scepsis Scientifica, c. xvi.

   The present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words, that it would be impossible for one of our great-grandfathers to know what his posterity has been doing. Spectator.