What does attainting mean?
Attainting is the act of subjecting someone to attainder, an abolished but historically consequential mechanism of English law. A person convicted by this process — typically of treason or felony — suffered forfeiture of lands and goods to the Crown and 'corruption of blood,' which barred their heirs from inheriting property or titles. Attainder could be imposed either by judicial sentence or directly by an Act of Parliament, making it a powerful political weapon in medieval and Tudor England, frequently wielded against defeated rebels and disgraced nobles. By extension, attainting can also describe disgracing or staining a reputation more generally. Today the word appears mainly in legal history, biography, and literary prose, carrying heavy connotations of condemnation, disgrace, and hereditary ruin. Its rarity in everyday speech makes it a distinctly formal term, instantly signalling historical or juridical context.
Present participle of 'attaint': to condemn someone by attainder, or to disgrace and stain someone's reputation.
"The king secured a bill attainting his rival before Parliament had fully examined the charges."
Almost entirely confined to legal-historical writing today.
As a gerund, attainting refers to the act or process of imposing attainder on someone.
"Attainting without trial became one of the most criticised abuses of royal power."
In old English law, being attainted was so severe that your blood was considered legally 'corrupted' — meaning even your unborn descendants could inherit nothing from you.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of attainting
Attainting derives from the verb 'attaint,' which entered Middle English from Anglo-Norman French 'ateint,' the past participle of Old French 'ataindre' ('to convict, touch upon'), itself from Latin 'attingere,' meaning 'to reach, touch.' The legal sense of condemning someone to attainder developed in medieval English law, while a broader sense of staining or disgracing also emerged. Cognates include 'attainder,' the noun for the legal state itself, and ultimately relatives such as 'contact' and 'contingent' from the same Latin root.
Related word forms
How attainting is actually used
Attainting belongs chiefly to formal, legal, and historical registers. In modern usage it survives almost exclusively in discussions of English legal history, where attainder was abolished in 1870 in Britain; figurative uses referring to reputational disgrace are rare and literary.
Easily confused with attainting
'Attaining' means achieving or reaching something desirable, whereas 'attainting' means disgracing or legally condemning — near-identical spellings with opposite connotations.