What's the difference between taint and taunt?

Taint


Definition:

  • (n.) A thrust with a lance, which fails of its intended effect.
  • (n.) An injury done to a lance in an encounter, without its being broken; also, a breaking of a lance in an encounter in a dishonorable or unscientific manner.
  • (v. i.) To thrust ineffectually with a lance.
  • (v. t.) To injure, as a lance, without breaking it; also, to break, as a lance, but usually in an unknightly or unscientific manner.
  • (v. t.) To hit or touch lightly, in tilting.
  • (v. t.) To imbue or impregnate with something extraneous, especially with something odious, noxious, or poisonous; hence, to corrupt; to infect; to poison; as, putrid substance taint the air.
  • (v. t.) Fig.: To stain; to sully; to tarnish.
  • (v. i.) To be infected or corrupted; to be touched with something corrupting.
  • (v. i.) To be affected with incipient putrefaction; as, meat soon taints in warm weather.
  • (n.) Tincture; hue; color; tinge.
  • (n.) Infection; corruption; deprivation.
  • (n.) A blemish on reputation; stain; spot; disgrace.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) While ruling that there had been improper use of Schedule 7 powers, the judge commented: "It was clear that the Security Service, for entirely understandable reasons, was anxious if possible to get information which could not be regarded as tainted by torture allegations or which might confirm the propriety of a control order."
  • (2) But it has a tainted reputation: the 2007 foot and mouth outbreak was traced to a leak from Pirbright’s drains.
  • (3) Those wrongdoings taint a whole industry beyond the handful of people and that makes it a huge problem."
  • (4) One half hour following the ingestion of a possibly tainted antibiotic capsule, a 14 year-old female experienced acute onset of stiffness and weakness in her lower extremities.
  • (5) It might smell close to pot, he said, but would be “tainted” because of all the other items and plants like poison oak burning along with it.
  • (6) Attorneys for the family of Rice, who was killed by police officer Timothy Loehmann while holding a pellet gun in a park in Cleveland in November last year, said the pair of external reports had “tainted the grand jury process” that is considering criminal charges against Loehmann.
  • (7) A simple, cheap and rapid method for the quantitative determination of the boar taint substance, 5 alpha-androst-16-en-3-one, in pig adipose tissue is described.
  • (8) The scale scores the constitutional taints, the extent of the operation, the age, the eventual emergency, the special anaesthetic risk.
  • (9) The second is that almost eight years after voting in the conclave that chose Benedict XVI, Cardinal Keith O'Brien seems too irredeemably tainted by scandal and allegations of hypocrisy to find himself electing any future popes.
  • (10) Part of the difficulty in making the case may be that the euro has translated into brutal austerity on parts of the continent’s south, tainting the EU’s claims to be a levelling force.
  • (11) County prosecutors may have to review hundreds of current and past convictions involving the officers to determine if their contribution to such cases was tainted by racial bias.
  • (12) Police and social workers in Oxfordshire had a tainted perception that girls as young as 11 consented to sex with men who raped and brutalised them, an independent report into the failure to stop their exploitation has said.
  • (13) This can contribute to mitigating the dangerously polarising and alarmist discourse that views migrants as a threat to a society and its public order.” The senior European human rights official says he is worried that this “dominant political discourse which is tainted by alarmism” has led to the unsurprising outcome that the public consider immigration as the most important issue facing the country ahead of health, crime or the economy.
  • (14) … Like that in any way mitigates what was done to him.” Sharpton said police tried to taint Garner’s image after his death by quickly releasing his arrest record.
  • (15) However, the Portuguese does not believe that all Chelsea supporters should be tainted by the incident.
  • (16) Thiophenol and thiocresol which sporadically cause offensive sulfury taints in Wisconsin River fish were also found in river sediment.
  • (17) Hamid Karzai, who was then president, eventually forced the Americans out of Nerkh, but the lack of justice continues to taint residents’ view of his successor.
  • (18) The big society strikes me as a political construct, a tainted venture.
  • (19) Sanlu, the firm at the heart of the problems, knew the milk was tainted months before it told local officials.
  • (20) Blood supplies were eventually tainted out of this failure to take constructive action, with the resultant mass infection of segments of the Brazilian population.

Taunt


Definition:

  • (a.) Very high or tall; as, a ship with taunt masts.
  • (v. t.) To reproach with severe or insulting words; to revile; to upbraid; to jeer at; to flout.
  • (n.) Upbraiding language; bitter or sarcastic reproach; insulting invective.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Brown made mincemeat of a succession of shadow chancellors, taunting them with the contrast between the strong growth and healthy public finances under Labour and the humiliation visited upon John Major's government on Black Wednesday.
  • (2) In his keynote speech in Manchester , Ed Miliband taunted the prime minister for lying awake at night worrying not about the future of the United Kingdom but rather the United Kingdom Independence party.
  • (3) Like her bolder aunt Marine, the timid Maréchal-Le Pen complained that she suffered greatly from taunts at school that her grandad was a “fascist”.
  • (4) Moreover, are schoolchildren thoughtlessly taunting each other with slang such as: "That's just straight"?
  • (5) So it will have been a wrench for Jez, and his embattled entourage, to have to “cave in”, as the Guardian’s report put it, and suspend the MP from the party after David Cameron (who really should leave the rough stuff to the rough end of the trade) had taunted him at PMQs for not acting sooner when the Guido Fawkes blog republished her ugly comments and the Mail on Sunday got out its trumpet.
  • (6) The first task of the new government was to allay those fears, to reassure the 27 that when Farage turned up at the European parliamen t after the referendum, like a drunk taunting an ex-wife at a cocktail party, he did not speak for Britain.
  • (7) One detainee I spoke to told me of racist taunting and abuse by guards, and boredom.
  • (8) I’ve got no doubt that some of these people in Abbott’s government hope that something goes wrong domestically – that they can taunt a Muslim into doing something,” he said.
  • (9) Gerrard had been mercilessly taunted again by Chelsea’s supporters and he had played as if determined to turn the volume down.
  • (10) From violence to verbal taunts, abusive dating behavior is pervasive among America’s adolescents, according to a new, federally funded survey.
  • (11) The internet activist group Anonymous has responded to Twitter taunts from the Ku Klux Klan by taking over its US Twitter account.
  • (12) The colossal tarpaulin roof had actually been opened and closed regularly throughout the day, as if taunting those fans who could not attend the rescheduled game, as the locals sought to dry the surface so there was an irony this game kicked off with autumnal sunshine pouring through the concourse under the canopy.
  • (13) Although much of the abuse centred on the taunts about the children's disabilities, police failed to recognise it as a hate crime rather than simple antisocial behaviour, which would have made it a far higher priority.
  • (14) But more serious trouble flared at the site of a burned convenience store where dozens of youths, some with covered faces, ripped up street signs and taunted police.
  • (15) She said she refuses to let anyone inside the room, and sweeps it for cameras and “booby traps.” She said she is taunted daily about the videos, which are still online.
  • (16) If that pattern is repeated, Labour will be taunted over 2008 in the elections of 2020, 2025 and 2030.
  • (17) The video appeared to show vulnerable residents being pinned down, slapped, doused in water and taunted.
  • (18) Convoys that try to get out of here must run the gauntlet of taunting Christian mobs.
  • (19) He was one of the greatest defenders of his era, and one of the most taunted.
  • (20) So the decision by Ed Miliband to face down Tory taunts of being the party of welfare and launch Labour's conference last weekend with a pledge to ban the hated cut is a welcome recognition of its human costs.