different between vitiation vs degeneracy

English

Alternative forms

• viciation

Etymology

Latin vitiare (“to spoil, damage”)

Noun

vitiation (countable and uncountable, plural vitiations)

1. a reduction in the value, or an impairment in the quality of something
   • 1810, George Wilson, M.D., F.R.D.E. Ch. II. General Sketch of Cavendish's Scientific Researches and Discoveries, in The Life of the Hon^ble Henry Cavendish, p. 39.

     […] air was universally reputed to be a simple or elementary body. It was liable, according to the phlogistians, to vitiation, by the addition to it of phlogiston […] being more or less phlogisticated, according to the degree of its power to support respiration and combustion.

   • Lincoln once reprimanded a young army officer for indulging in a violent controversy with an associate. "No man who is resolved to make the most of himself," said Lincoln, "can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take the consequences, including the vitiation of his temper and the loss of self-control.

2. moral corruption
3. an abolition or abrogation

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d??d??n???si/

Noun

degeneracy (countable and uncountable, plural degeneracies)

1. the state of being degenerate (in all senses)
2. (neuroscience) the ability of one part of the brain to take over another's function without being overexerted.

   Coordinate term: compensation

Translations