As it’s written, it’s used as a noun, but it is incorrect usage, because the noun form is “contaminant”. “Contaminate” is also listed in my dictionary as an adjective but only as archaic usage.
They may have been thinking about an analogy with “precipitate”, which is a legitimate noun.
Is there any evidence of using “contaminate” as a verb in real scientific writing, or in a dictionary? Even if such a word exists, I would doubt it would be a legitimate part of a seventh grade curriculum, at least in the US. The standard word is “contaminant”.
I also agree that it sounds awkward to speak of a computer being contaminated. I usually think of contaminants as unwanted chemicals in a substance. I could see it used metaphorically in other cases where some type of “substance” is seen as unwanted and that results in spoilation, but using it to refer to a replicating organism-like entity seems to be too much of a stretch to be good English.
It’s a noun. You could replace it with an X or a blank and it would still be a noun. Whatever you put in that spot in the sentence is a noun, even if it is a word that usually functions as another part of speech. Since English has gotten increasingly comfortable with words being used as any part of speech (known as the buffification of language—or it should be, anyway), I think it’s a good idea for tests to give kids non-conventional usages to parse, though in this case I think the test writer just used the wrong word there. Still, I’m ok with it. True, verbing weirds language, and so does nouning, but they also embiggen it.
Yeah, you are confirming what I thought. And depressing me as well. This kid was taking a makeup test, after everyone else is presumably done, and no one questioned this.
It is modified by a definite article, which only modifies nouns or noun-phrases.
It is the subject of the sentence – the nominative to the predicate ‘was.’
If the test-writer was being too clever and intended ‘contaminate’ to be a reversed-word-order predicate-adjective, like the word ‘red’ is in this sentence: “The ball was red,” Then the test-writer is an idiot. Even in that case ‘contaminate’ would be a substantive-adjective, which is… a noun.
But I also agree with the above that ‘contaminate’ is the wrong word, it should be ‘contaminant’… unless the OP is misremembering the word.
I agree.
The use of “the” (definite article?) preceding it instantly marks it as a noun, since there is no other noun for “the” to modify.
I also believe they misspoke and meant contaminant. I have never ever heard “contaminate” used in that way, as a noun. you can use “predicate”, or “precipitate”, but usually that refers (I think) to a whole, not a component. As one component of a mixture (by its definition), it would seen the word is contaminant.
I don’t recall ever seeing it used as a noun. Can anyone provide an example of a published, competently-written work in which the word “contaminate” appears as a noun?
However, I agree with Alan Smithee that, regardless of what the word is or whether it was used correctly, it had the role of a noun in the OP’s sentence.