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Vitiate   Listen
verb
Vitiate  v. t.  (past & past part. vitiated; pres. part. vitiating)  (Written also viciate)  
1.
To make vicious, faulty, or imperfect; to render defective; to injure the substance or qualities of; to impair; to contaminate; to spoil; as, exaggeration vitiates a style of writing; sewer gas vitiates the air. "A will vitiated and growth out of love with the truth disposes the understanding to error and delusion." "Without care it may be used to vitiate our minds." "This undistinguishing complaisance will vitiate the taste of readers."
2.
To cause to fail of effect, either wholly or in part; to make void; to destroy, as the validity or binding force of an instrument or transaction; to annul; as, any undue influence exerted on a jury vitiates their verdict; fraud vitiates a contract.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Vitiate" Quotes from Famous Books



... double exception—viz. to the adoption of the new rule at the trial, and then to the operation of the new rule before the court of error, which must then hold that a single bad, or a dozen bad counts, will not vitiate a general judgment, if sustained by one good count! Does not all this suffice to show the desperate shifts to which even two such distinguished judges are driven, in order to support the new rule, and conceal its impracticability? Then why should the old lamp ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... the course of practical work and shaped itself day by day unconsciously. It might be charged, nevertheless, that I was all the time, whether consciously or unconsciously, simply reading my Theology into my Science. And as this would hopelessly vitiate the conclusions arrived at, I must acquit myself at least of the intention. Of nothing have I been more fearful throughout than of making Nature parallel with my own or with any creed. The only legitimate questions one dare put to Nature are those which concern universal human ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... twelve days, while in winter it may be found even after several months - by the right method. Certainly this case comes within the average length of time. More than that, no substance is generated by the process of decomposition which will vitiate the test for chloroform which I have just made. Chloroform has an affinity for water and is also a preservative, and hence from all these facts I think it safe to conclude that sometimes traces of it may be found for two weeks after its administration, certainly ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... the weights upon the right-hand pan. Every substance which could attack the metal of the balance pan should be weighed upon a watch-glass, and all objects must be dry and cold. A warm body gives rise to air currents which vitiate the accuracy of ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of judging, vitiate your faculty of tasting. Recognize the importance, the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued yourselves on despising,—that sympathy which is the sum of experience, the condition of insight, the root of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various


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