Definition of "vitiate"
vitiate
verb
third-person singular simple present vitiates, present participle vitiating, simple past and past participle vitiated
(transitive) To spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something.
Quotations
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.
1838, Ralph Waldo Emerson, An Address delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday evening, 15 July, 1838
Such diversion as Podson could extort from his isolation was soon vitiated by repetition. He surfed. He sun-baked - with discretion till his skin had peeled and given him a harder cuticle.
1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, page 90
Unfortunately, as Anderson and Sørenson (1996) and Bowsher (2002) document, instrument proliferation can vitiate the test.
2007 August, David Roodman, “A Short Note on the Theme of Too Many Instruments”, in Center for Global Development Working Paper 125, page 9
We have examined with care all known negative feedback mechanisms, such as increase in low or middle cloud amount, and have concluded that the oversimplifications and inaccuracies in the models are not likely to have vitiated the principal conclusions that there will be appreciable warming.
2010, Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, quoting J. Charney et al., Carbon Dioxide and Climate […] , National Research Council, 1979, quoted in Merchants of Doubt
(transitive) To debase or morally corrupt.
Quotations
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.
1838, [Letitia Elizabeth] Landon (indicated as editor), chapter III, in Duty and Inclination: […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], page 25
There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.
1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley
The robber does not intentionally vitiate people, but the governments, to accomplish their ends, vitiate whole generations from childhood to manhood with false religions and patriotic instruction.
1890, Leo Tolstoy, The Slavery of Our Times
(transitive) To make something ineffective, to invalidate.
Quotations
He went over his canvases with disgust and anger, unable to see virtue in any one of them. Even his sacred Oyster Girl went back on him. The creature of a vitiated æstheticism, he could only suppose that conceit had played an abominable trick on his eyesight.
1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, page 133