Word of the Day

: December 16, 2018

vitiate

verb VISH-ee-ayt

What It Means

1 : to make faulty or defective : impair

2 : to debase in moral or aesthetic status

3 : to make ineffective

vitiate in Context

Some feared that the superintendent's decision to reinstate the students would vitiate the authority of the principal who suspended them in the first place.

"Convected heating essentially is the heating of the air itself and it warms the walls and furnishings only slightly, as turning on and off a convector heater will show. However it may also be argued that this essentially vitiates the recycled air, causes dryness and often physical discomfort." — James Le Fanu, The Telegraph (UK), 18 Mar. 2016

Did You Know?

Here's one for word puzzle lovers—and anyone allured by alliteration. The sentence "Vivian vituperated the vicious villain for valuing vice over virtue" contains three words that derive from the same Latin source as vitiate. Can you identify all three? If you picked vituperate (a verb meaning "to scold"), vicious, and vice, your puzzle prowess is beyond reproach. Like vitiate, all three descend from the Latin noun vitium, meaning "fault" or "vice."