originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Synonyms are not definitions. One of the first things I used to tell my first year students was to hide their thesauruses away since using them to find gussied up vocabulary was only leading them into misusing words. In a reduced way, that is what is happening here. Webster's first definition was, as you saw, not adulterated or pure. Its second definition did offer complete or absolute as in an unadulterated fool and, in a sloppy way, that is accurate enough. When we say someone is an unadulterated fool, we really don't distinguish it from an utter fool, a complete fool or an absolute fool. When, however, Hegel refers to the absolute mind, he most pointedly does not mean the unadulterated mind. And when you buy a complete and unabridged edition, you are not buying merely (or even) an unadulterated one. If you consider editorial attachments adulterations, as many do, you could easily have a complete and unabridged but highly adulterated edition. Your trnasposition of complete and absolute to this tasting note is just such a csse.