Vitiate
Pronunciation
- UK IPA: /ˈvɪʃ.i.eɪt/
Origin
From vitiÄtus, the perfect passive participle of Latin vitiÅ ("damage, spoil"), from vitium ("vice").
Full definition of vitiate
Verb
- (transitive) to spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something
- 1851, Herman Melville, ,There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.
- 1997: ‘Mr Rose,’ says the Physician, ‘this man was brought to us from Russia. Precisely such a case of vitiated judgment as I describe at length in my Treatise on Madness. Mayhap you have read it?’ — Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain
- (transitive) to debase or morally corrupt
- 1890, Leo Tolstoy, The robber does not intentionally vitiate people, but the governments, to accomplish their ends, vitiate whole generations from childhood to manhood with false religions and patriotic instruction.
- (transitive, archaic) to violate, to rape
- 1965: ‘Crush the cockatrice,’ he groaned, from his death-cell. ‘I am dead in law’ – but of the girl he denied that he had ‘attempted to vitiate her at Nine years old’; for ‘upon the word of a dying man, both her Eyes did see, and her Hands did act in all that was done’. — John Fowles, The Magus
- (transitive) to make something ineffective, to invalidate