Verb

(mitigat)

To reduce, lessen, or decrease.

* 1795 —

Measures are pursuing to prevent or mitigate the usual consequences of such outrages, and with the hope of their succeeding at least to avert general hostility.

* 1813 —

But in yielding to it the retaliation has been mitigated as much as possible, both in its extent and in its character...

* 1896 —

Then they tell us that vaccination will mitigate the disease that it will make it milder.

* 1901 — , ch 7

Then I discovered the brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated by blue spectacles.

* 1920 —

The plague had not been kind to him, yet had left him this small furry thing to mitigate his sorrow; and when one is very young, one can find great relief in the lively antics of a black kitten.

To downplay.

Verb

(vitiat)

to spoil, make faulty; to reduce the value, quality, or effectiveness of something

*1851 ,

There was excellent blood in his veins—royal stuff; though sadly vitiated , I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.

* 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. }}