Verb

to soil or stain; to dirty

He did not wish to sully his hands with gardening.

* Roscommon

statues sullied yet with sacrilegious smoke

to damage or corrupt

He did not wish to sully his reputation with an ill-mannered comment.

* Atterbury

no spots to sully the brightness of this solemnity

To become soiled or tarnished.

* Francis Bacon

Silvering will sully and canker more than gilding.

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. }}