vitiate
Americanverb (used with object)
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vitiates,
present (3rd person singular)
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vitiated,
past participle, past
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vitiating
present participle
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to impair the quality of; make faulty; spoil.
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to impair or weaken the effectiveness of.
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to make legally defective or invalid; invalidate.
to vitiate a claim.
verb
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to make faulty or imperfect
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to debase, pervert, or corrupt
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to destroy the force or legal effect of (a deed, etc)
to vitiate a contract
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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nonvitiationnoun
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vitiationnoun
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vitiatornoun
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unvitiatedadjective
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unvitiatingadjective
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vitiableadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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vitiatesimple
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vitiatessimple
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have vitiatedperfect
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has vitiatedperfect
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am vitiatingprogressive
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are vitiatingprogressive
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is vitiatingprogressive
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have been vitiatingperfect progressive
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has been vitiatingperfect progressive
Past
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vitiatedsimple
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had vitiatedperfect
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was vitiatingprogressive
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were vitiatingprogressive
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had been vitiatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of vitiate
First recorded in 1525–35; from Latin vitiātus, past participle of vitiāre “to spoil, impair,” derivative of vitium “blemish, defect, fault” + -ātus; see vice 1, -ate 1
Explanation
As some sneaky five-year-olds know, crossing one’s fingers while making a promise is an effective way to vitiate, or destroy the validity of, an agreement. Vitiate is often used when a legal agreement is made invalid, but it can also refer to the debasement or corruption of something or someone. If a malicious five-year-old on the playground teaches the other children to lie with their fingers crossed, she would be responsible for vitiating the playground community. The first syllable of this word is pronounced "vish," like the first syllable in vicious.
Vocabulary lists containing vitiate
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "V"
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On the Origin of Species
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Giving that up, Professor Bale said, would vitiate the ideological rationale of her government and potentially turn her into a lame-duck leader until the next election, which she will have to call by early 2025.
From New York Times ● Sep. 30, 2022
The rule recognized that new technologies cannot be employed to vitiate the right to be secure promised by the Fourth Amendment.
From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2021
He said that this approach would vitiate the idea of checks and balances at the heart of congressional oversight.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 3, 2020
In the case of McNally, who presented as a teenage boy throughout a relationship with a teenage girl, the Court of Appeal determined that "deception as to gender can vitiate consent".
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2019
If any air gets into the tube, it does not get to the top, and therefore does not vitiate the performance of the barometer; for the mercury itself works up and down through the funnel.
From A Treatise on Meteorological Instruments Explanatory of Their Scientific Principles, Method of Construction, and Practical Utility by Henry Negretti
If that evidence shows that someone else inflicted the wounds—if it casts doubt on whether Gutierrez caused, intended, or anticipated Harrison’s death—it vitiates the findings that made him eligible for the death penalty.
From Slate ● Jun. 26, 2025
Mr. Daley said the warning that plays at the beginning of these inmate calls constitutes “a voluntary waiver that vitiates privilege” for anyone on the call.
From New York Times ● May 22, 2018
Publishing in Cogent doesn’t merely muddy the waters on their point against gender studies, it completely vitiates it.
From Salon ● May 22, 2017
This stands in stark contrast to the unrelenting practice of broken windows policing, which places enormous pressures on police officers to cast wide nets of summonses and arrests and vitiates their professional capacities.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 29, 2015
Everything written these days vitiates the soul and lures it to its destruction.
From The Song of Songs by Hermann Sudermann
And, especially relevant to Edelman in this case: Is it vitiated by bad motives?
From New York Times ● Jun. 26, 2023
He also argued that her “excellent case for Mank is in the end more than somewhat vitiated by the publication of the script itself,” describing it as smart but superficial.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 5, 2020
“In such a vitiated atmosphere, it’s impossible for me to see Dil Bechara in isolation and gauge it on its own merits,” she wrote in the Film Companion, an online movie magazine.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 25, 2020
The prosecution's case was that the woman's consent was vitiated by Lawrance's deception.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2020
It is apparent, therefore, that the tongue presents evidences of vitiated secretions, of local catarrh of the buccal mucous membranes, and of the high grade of gastric irritation so constantly attendant on this disease.
From A System of Practical Medicine by American Authors, Vol. I Volume 1: Pathology and General Diseases by Various
PBS SoCal does not value its own programs by vitiating the viewer’s experience.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 23, 2022
But a large Jeff Koons piece is droning nearby, vitiating thought with its generic monotone of irony.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 13, 2015
Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.
From New York Times ● Jun. 8, 2013
Pakistan summoned Afghanistan's chargé d'affaires on Thursday to protest "an unprovoked firing incident" that is "vitiating the friendly relations and creating avoidable tension between the two brotherly countries," the Pakistani foreign ministry said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 2, 2013
To me it appears any thing but easy to separate the functions of a revealer of truly inspired truth from the vitiating influences of a fallacious logic.
From The Eclipse of Faith Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic by Henry Rogers
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
