Dictionary Definition
vitiate
Verb
1 corrupt morally or by intemperance or
sensuality; "debauch the young people with wine and women";
"Socrates was accused of corrupting young men"; "Do school
counselors subvert young children?"; "corrupt the morals" [syn:
corrupt, pervert, subvert, demoralize, demoralise, debauch, debase, profane, deprave, misdirect]
3 take away the legal force of or render
ineffective; "invalidateas a contract" [syn: invalidate, void] [ant: validate]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- /'vɪʃi:eɪt/
Verb
- to spoil, make faulty;
to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something
- 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
- to debase or morally corrupt
- 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
- to make something ineffective, to invalidate
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
abate,
abolish, abrogate, adulterate, alloy, annihilate, annul, bastardize, blemish, bring to nothing,
brutalize, buffer, cancel, cancel out, canker, cheapen, coarsen, come to nothing,
confound, contaminate, corrupt, corrupted, counterbalance, damage, debase, debauch, debauched, defile, deflower, degenerate, degrade, delete, demoralize, denature, deprave, depraved, depreciate, depress, desecrate, despoil, destroy, devalue, diminish, distort, downgrade, frustrate, harm, hurt, impair, infect, invalidate, lower, mar, misuse, negate, negativate, negative, neutralize, nullify, offset, pervert, perverted, poison, pollute, prejudice, prostitute, quash, ravage, ravish, reduce, revoke, ruin, soil, spoil, stultify, sully, suppress, taint, tarnish, thwart, twist, ulcerate, undermine, undo, violate, vitiated, void, vulgarize, warp, weaken, withdraw