The act or process of making something impure by adding an inferior or foreign substance; the state of being adulterated.
From Latin adulteratio, the noun form of adulterare, with the -ion suffix. First widely used in legal and commercial contexts in medieval and Renaissance Europe.
The Victorian era's 'Great Adulteration' scandal exposed how food was being fraudulently mixed with poisons and filth—it led directly to the first modern food safety laws, showing how one word can trigger a whole revolution in public health.
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