Definition of IMMACULATE

Other Words from immaculate

immaculately adverb

immaculateness noun

… the immaculateness of scrubbed decks … — William Sansom

Did You Know?

The opposite of immaculate is maculate, which means "marked with spots" or "impure." The Latin word maculatus, the past participle of a verb meaning "to stain," is the source of both words and can be traced back to macula, a word that scientists still use for spots on the skin, on the wings of insects, and on the surface of celestial objects. Maculate has not marked as many pages as immaculate, but it has appeared occasionally (one might say "spottily"), especially as an antithesis to immaculate. We find the pair, for example, in an article by Peter Schjeldahl in an April 2004 issue of The New Yorker: "Rob's apartment, with its immaculate ranks of album spines and its all too maculate strewing of everything else…."

Examples of immaculate in a Sentence

… they seemed as remote from metaphysics as their lunch bags and knapsacks. Yet weren't they all heading for those immaculate country snowfields to talk of God? — Cynthia Ozick, Atlantic, May 1997 … and added to this was the fact that this Soviet Army Colonel had a service record that was as immaculate as a field of freshly fallen snow … — Tom Clancy, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, (1988) 1989 I was expecting some giant to emerge, but in came a tiny, immaculate, white-haired man. — Anna Russell, I'm Not Making This Up, You Know, 1985 She had an immaculate record of service. somehow managed to keep the white carpet immaculate

Recent Examples on the Web

And the Four Seasons, the immaculate cafeteria that begat the so-retro-as-to-seem-quaint Power Lunch, was his alone. — Mark Lamster, Curbed, "Arbiter of taste, enfant terrible: The best and worst of Philip Johnson," 6 Nov. 2018 The whitewashed buildings are immaculate, and the staff are waiting in the driveway to welcome you. — Jane Broughton, Condé Nast Traveler, "16 Best Hotels in Cape Town," 14 Sep. 2018 Your whole goal with contact lenses is to keep them immaculate. — Korin Miller, SELF, "How Bad Is It to Lick Your Contact, Then Put It Back In?," 19 July 2018 After his wife died, Phil Elverum turned his grief into the immaculate record A Crow Looked at Me. — Kevin Nguyen, GQ, "You Could Use a Style Upgrade," 11 Apr. 2018 When the general and his wife hosted a dinner, cooked by a private chef at MacDill, the whole thing was immaculate — except, some guests say, for Jill Kelley and Natalie Khawam. — Vicky Ward, Town & Country, "The Bizarre Scandal That Brought Down General David Petraeus," 29 Nov. 2016 What better place for meandering conversations about life, family and our hopes and fears than this immaculate Viennese spa on a cold October day? — Molly Selvin, latimes.com, "In Vienna, time for creating new memories and revisiting the old," 8 July 2018 The front nine plays in a links-style format and features rolling hills, native grasses and immaculate greens. — Jeremy Carranco, San Antonio Express-News, "Greater San Antonio Men’s Championship tees off for 98th time," 12 July 2018 Last month, a fire tore through the Glasgow School of Art, demolishing the majority of the building’s interior, which had just undergone an immaculate restoration after an earlier fire in 2014. — Liz Stinson, Curbed, "Glasgow School of Art will be rebuilt after devastating fire," 12 July 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'immaculate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.