How to Use taint in a Sentence

taint

1 of 2 verb
  • And yet, for years, the air has been tainted.
    — Walker Armstrong, San Diego Union-Tribune, 5 Apr. 2026
  • Is there something tainted or cursed about this place?
    — Kennedy French, Variety, 4 Mar. 2026
  • But there’s a taste of ash tainting the popcorn thrills.
    — David Fear, Rolling Stone, 11 Nov. 2025
  • From the very start, hope around the target was tainted by doubt.
    — Sophie Yeo, The Dial, 4 Nov. 2025
  • And there's also issues of tainting the jury pool.
    — Stepheny Price , Michael Ruiz , Adam Sabes , Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, FOXNews.com, 11 Dec. 2025
  • Sadio believed that soccer should not be tainted just because of a bad call.
    — Voice Of The People, New York Daily News, 26 Jan. 2026
  • The stone reflects how a place once labeled as tainted came to hold some of the finest materials in the state.
    — Daniel Wilkerson, CBS News, 2 Feb. 2026
  • That means every angle needs to be screen-ready and not tainted by equipment, crew or the director.
    — Tribune News Service, Baltimore Sun, 19 Feb. 2026
  • That means every angle needs to be screen-ready and not tainted by equipment, crew or the director.
    — John Wenzel, Denver Post, 11 Feb. 2026
  • Does the fact that Burden is still pretty wealthy really taint this tale of heartbreak?
    — Brittany Allen, Literary Hub, 28 May 2026
  • The sarcasm taints the question but doesn’t invalidate it.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 24 Mar. 2026
  • All of the overstuffed albums and Billboard hits he’s racked up since then are tainted with that context.
    — Alphonse Pierre, Pitchfork, 12 May 2026
  • What was once a poignant effort to extend a state of ingenuousness is now tainted from the start.
    — Becca Rothfeld, New Yorker, 1 June 2026
  • And around all this, the whiff of Epstein is tainting the president's achievements.
    — Kate Plummer, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Aug. 2025
  • This will probably taint it forever.
    — Amanda Lee Myers, USA Today, 24 Mar. 2026
  • To this day, their armed forces remain tainted by the weight of their misrule and repression some 50 years ago.
    — Kristina Mani, The Conversation, 23 Sep. 2025
  • Suddenly, my spotless record was tainted.
    — Joe Garcia, New Yorker, 12 Oct. 2025
  • Now, streaming is tainting the postseason.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 15 Apr. 2026
  • Runoff from cultivation sites may taint the water due to the presence of pesticides.
    — Colson Thayer, People.com, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Court exhibit But that, too, Casteleiro argued, was tainted.
    — Mary Murphy, CBS News, 26 Apr. 2026
  • That’s been an idiotic trope for too long — that participating in the business side of it taints you.
    — Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2026
  • One year ago, Martinsville was tainted by race manipulation on two counts.
    — Jordan Bianchi, New York Times, 25 Oct. 2025
  • Infected people and dogs had to be prevented from tainting water sources.
    — Dan Raby, CBS News, 30 Jan. 2026
  • In both of his terms, the president has displayed an impulse to simply ignore or spin numbers that might taint his legacy.
    — Allison Morrow, CNN Money, 16 Sep. 2025
  • Two east metro sites known to be tainted with petroleum and other contaminants will soon be on the mend thanks to grant funding.
    — Mars King, Twin Cities, 21 Aug. 2025
  • The last few seasons were tainted by injuries and inconsistency.
    — Jace Frederick, Twin Cities, 14 Mar. 2026
  • Cheney was not implicated in the case legally, but he was tainted by the scandal nonetheless.
    — Don Gonyea, NPR, 4 Nov. 2025
  • If not, their static free agency will taint them as a collection of high-character guys who couldn’t finish the job without more outside help.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 3 June 2026
  • But the judge balked, citing concerns over the field trip becoming a spectacle that would draw a crowd of protesters, which could then taint the jury.
    — Hannah Meisel, CBS News, 19 May 2026
  • Since Do’s bribery scandal emerged, the county ordered a forensic audit of contracts he was involved with to see if more might be tainted.
    — Michael Slaten, Oc Register, 13 Aug. 2025

taint

2 of 2 noun
  • The taint of it all has melted away.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 7 Sep. 2025
  • Grapes that are damaged by smoke taint might not make a very good wine.
    — Esther Mobley, SFChronicle.com, 24 Sep. 2020
  • Take care not to touch the glands, or your hands will carry their taint to the meat.
    — Maurice H. Decker, Outdoor Life, 17 Sep. 2025
  • Sure enough, the tests showed small levels of smoke-taint compounds.
    — Esther Mobley, SFChronicle.com, 31 Oct. 2019
  • The judge can also use a special master to do what the taint team would do.
    — Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY, 17 Apr. 2018
  • His left hand reaches around, grabs my ass cheek, and one of his fingers touches me in the taint.
    — Benjamin Vanhoose, Peoplemag, 7 Feb. 2023
  • The results indicated a low risk of smoke taint for the whites and rosés.
    — NBC News, 24 Sep. 2020
  • Epstein is gone, but his taint lives on and there may well be more resignations to come.
    — Ephrat Livni, Quartz, 7 Sep. 2019
  • Perhaps those bodies most charged with the hands-on care of these bodies also bear the taint.
    — Longreads, 14 Apr. 2020
  • Such waste can choke marine life, hamper boaters and taint drinking water.
    — Chronicle Staff, SFChronicle.com, 22 Nov. 2020
  • Clearly, the best way to prevent smoke taint would be to prevent wildfires in the first place.
    — Nicola Twilley, New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2026
  • But the thing people have to realize about smoke taint is that all the wine in vats and barrels is fine.
    — Ray Isle, PEOPLE.com, 17 Oct. 2017
  • Buying land here is also a hedge against the destruction that wildfire and smoke taint can bring.
    — Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 Mar. 2022
  • It's believed the rite cleanses a soldier of war's taint and heads off postwar ailments.
    — Betty Reid, azcentral, 29 Aug. 2019
  • Hundreds of wineries needed smoke-taint tests at the same time, and only a handful of labs could do it.
    — Dave Eggers, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2020
  • Those were the controls; the smoke-taint tests had come back negative, Kurtzman said.
    — Esther Mobley, SFChronicle.com, 3 Dec. 2020
  • Cork Taint When a wine is described as corked, the culprit is something known as cork taint.
    — Mike Desimone and Jeff Jenssen, Robb Report, 21 Feb. 2023
  • Even a week in politics or business can see off the taint of scandal or poor leadership.
    — Jim Osman, Forbes, 28 Apr. 2021
  • The fact that the 2021 harvest was not threatened by fires or smoke taint was also a boon.
    — Liz Thach, Forbes, 19 Jan. 2022
  • Once the flames are extinguished, the major issue for the wine industry will be smoke taint.
    — Esther Mobley, SFChronicle.com, 27 Aug. 2020
  • What White men choose to disregard comes to bear the taint of effluvium.
    — Washington Post, 17 Nov. 2021
  • The taint of scandal still surrounds him, and many of his policies remain divisive.
    — Thomas Maresca, USA TODAY, 19 Oct. 2017
  • Did the Dutch police feel that sense of taint—taint that perhaps comes with any undercover work?
    — Andy Greenberg, WIRED, 29 Nov. 2022
  • There is the taint of stigma and a reticence to talk openly about this kind of reproductive loss.
    — Tara Shafer, Redbook, 19 June 2018
  • Cosby is hardly the first celebrity to experience a fall from grace or the taint of scandal.
    — Brian Lowry, CNN, 18 June 2017
  • All that mattered was to be free of what, to him, was the Germanic taint of ‘Rosenberg’.
    — Jonathan Freedland, Time, 29 Dec. 2022
  • But the presence of these compounds in grapes failed miserably as a diagnostic for smoke taint.
    — Nicola Twilley, New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2026
  • Collins runs the most impressive smoke-taint experiments in the country.
    — Nicola Twilley, New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2026
  • Lou’s Gold Medal and the taint of his origins combined to nearly exclude him from the job market.
    — Marty Judge Community Voices Contributor, San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 Mar. 2021
  • The film remains a curio in the franchise, a film that perhaps undeservingly has the taint of a flop.
    — Declan Gallagher, EW.com, 24 Oct. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'taint.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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