Word of the DaySaturday, May 03, 2003
vitiate
\VISH-ee-ayt\ , transitive verb:1.
To make faulty or imperfect; to render defective; to impair; as, "exaggeration vitiates a style of writing."
2.
To corrupt morally; to debase.
3.
To render ineffective; as, "fraud vitiates a contract."
Quotes:
MacNelly is one of the few contemporary political cartoonists who can use humor to accentuate, not vitiate, his points.
-- Richard E. Marschall, "The Century In Political Cartoons", Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1999
Their religious convictions and conduct were held to be vitiated by hideous error.
-- David Vital, A People Apart
Whatever a "real contradiction" might be, "apparent contradictions" are quite sufficient to vitiate a doctrine of biblical authority that is based on the supposedly apparent reading of the text.
-- Robert M. Price, "The Psychology of Biblicism", Humanist, May 2001
It seems churlish to say of a book that is beautifully written, richly allusive, learned, elegant, Proustian in tone and mode, that precisely these qualities vitiate its ostensible purpose, distracting attention from the subject and focusing it upon the very gifted author.
-- Gertrude Himmelfarb, "A Man's Own Household His Enemies", Commentary, July 1999
It is conceivable that an error could be so serious as to vitiate the entire body of the work.
-- Linda Hawes Clever and Lois Ann Colaianni, "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals", Public Health Reports, May/June 1997
Origin:
Vitiate comes from Latin vitiare, from vitium, fault. It is related to vice (a moral failing or fault), which comes from vitium via French.
