Attenuate vs Vitiate - What's the difference?
attenuate | vitiate |
To reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.
* 1874 , , Far From the Madding Crowd , ch. 40:
To make thinner, as by physically reshaping, starving, or decaying.
* 1899 , , His New Mittens , ch. 4:
* 1906 , , The Malefactor , ch. 1:
To weaken.
* Coleridge
* Sir F. Palgrave
To rarefy.
* 1901 , , The First Men in the Moon , ch. 23:
(medicine) To reduce the virulence of a bacteria or virus.
(electronics) To reduce the amplitude of an electrical signal.
(botany, of leaves) Gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.
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to spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something
*1851 ,
* 1997': ‘Mr Rose,’ says the Physician, ‘this man was brought to us from Russia. Precisely such a case of '''vitiated judgment as I describe at length in my Treatise on Madness. Mayhap you have read it?’ — Andrew Miller, ''Ingenious Pain
to debase or morally corrupt
*1890 , Leo Tolstoy,
*: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.
(archaic) to violate, to rape
* 1965': ‘Crush the cockatrice,’ he groaned, from his death-cell. ‘I am dead in law’ – but of the girl he denied that he had ‘attempted to '''vitiate her at Nine years old’; for ‘upon the word of a dying man, both her Eyes did see, and her Hands did act in all that was done’. — John Fowles, ''The Magus
to make something ineffective, to invalidate
*{{quote-book
, author =
, title =
, year = 1734
, page = 78
, passage = ...all the hinges of the animal frame are subverted, every animal function is vitiated ; the carcass retains but just life enough to make it capable of suffering.
}}
In lang=en terms the difference between attenuate and vitiate
is that attenuate is to rarefy while vitiate is to make something ineffective, to invalidate.As verbs the difference between attenuate and vitiate
is that attenuate is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree while vitiate is to spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something.As an adjective attenuate
is (botany|of leaves) gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.attenuate
English
Verb
(attenuat)- A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone.
- Clumps of attenuated turkeys were suspended here and there.
- Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.
- The attention attenuates as its sphere contracts.
- We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagreness.
- "It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky—was exciting my companion unduly."
Antonyms
* amplify (electronics)Derived terms
* attenuation * attenuableAdjective
(en adjective)vitiate
English
Verb
(vitiat)- There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated , I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.