adulterate

If you adulterate something, you mess it up. You may not want to adulterate the beauty of freshly fallen snow by shoveling it, but how else are you going to get to work?

The verb adulterate comes from the Latin word adulterare, which means “to falsify,” or “to corrupt.” Whenever something original, pure, fresh, or wholesome is marred, polluted, defaced, or otherwise made inferior, it has been adulterated. A vitamin company might issue a recall if they learn that one of their products was adulterated during production. And if you hate dried fruit, you might complain that your grandma adulterates her oatmeal cookies with raisins.