Inficiate
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 To render or demonstrate to be invalid; to invalidate or disprove. transitive
"This logical contradiction which therefore inficiates the validity of a notion can have two aspects: either the notion reached by our argument is uncertain, that is it is not the only one which may be derived as a conclusion from our syllogism and then we have the aniścita or it is a petitio principi^([sic]), the sādhyasama."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"This logical contradiction which therefore inficiates the validity of a notion can have two aspects: either the notion reached by our argument is uncertain, that is it is not the only one which may be derived as a conclusion from our syllogism and then we have the aniścita or it is a petitio principi^([sic]), the sādhyasama."
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian inficiare + English -ate (suffix forming verbs), from Medieval Latin īnficior, alteration of Classical Latin īnfitior (“to deny, contradict”), from *īnfitiae (“denial”) (see īnfitiās eō), from fateor (“to admit, acknowledge”). Presumably originally a mistranslation by Italian speakers; compare aprimorate (“to elevate, improve”), taken from Portuguese in a similar manner. Earlier mentions of the word in Randle Cotgrave and Henry Cockeram's Early Modern English dictionaries are likely unconnected to the modern borrowing from Italian.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.