Vitiate
verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 To spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something. transitive
"The least admixture of a lie, -- for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance, -- will instantly vitiate the effect."
- 2 take away the legal force of or render ineffective wordnet
- 3 To debase or morally corrupt. transitive
"Dissolute and vitiated alike, they confided in, and ever acted in mutual concert with each other's plans, according to the deep subtleties of their reasonings, which linked them together by some secret spell."
- 4 make imperfect wordnet
- 5 To violate, to rape. archaic, transitive
"‘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’."
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 corrupt morally or by intemperance or sensuality wordnet
- 7 To make something ineffective, to invalidate. transitive
"[…]all the hinges of the animal frame are subverted, every animal function is vitiated; the carcass retains but just life enough to make it capable of suffering."
Example
More examples"The scandal threatened to vitiate the trust that the laity had long placed in their leaders."
Etymology
PIE word *dwóh₁ From Latin vitiātus, the perfect passive participle of vitiō (“damage, spoil”), from vitium (“vice”).
More for "vitiate"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.