devitalize
English edit
Etymology edit
Verb edit
devitalize (third-person singular simple present devitalizes, present participle devitalizing, simple past and past participle devitalized)
- (literal, figurative, transitive) To deprive of vitality; to make lifeless; to weaken.
- Antonyms: animate, reanimate, rejuvenate, revitalize, vitalize
- Coordinate terms: dispirit, kill
- Near-synonym: deanimate
- Noncrushing surgical clamps avoid devitalizing the cells of arterial walls.
- Economic stress has devitalized some shopping malls in the web era.
- 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 126:
- Not so long ago a Scotsman is reported to have exhumed the body of his daughter and burnt her heart, as he thought she was devitalising her remaining brother and sister and making them ill.