viti-, vitu-, vic- +

1. An immoral or evil habit or practice.
2. Immoral conduct; depraved or degrading behavior.
3. Sexual immorality; especially, prostitution.
4. A particular form of depravity.
5. A fault, defect, or shortcoming.
6. A physical defect, flaw, or infirmity.

1. Ferocious and violent; carried out with intense violence and an apparent desire to inflict serious harm, or acting in an aggressive, cruel, and violent way.
2. Dangerous and aggressive and liable to attack or bite; such as, a vicious dog.
3. Malicious and intended to cause someone mental anguish or to defame somebody.
4. Extremely severe or powerful and damaging in its effects.
5. Involving a chain of cause and effect or action and reaction in which things get progressively worse.
6. Wicked and immoral; such as, displaying or given to immoral behavior.
7. Etymology: from Anglo-French vicious, Old French vicieus, from Latin vitiosus, "faulty, defective, corrupt" from Latin vitium, "fault".

1. A description of people or actions that show an intention or desire to hurt someone or something very badly.
2. A depiction of an object, condition, or remark that causes great physical or emotional pain.
3. Corruptly; in a manner contrary to what is considered right and a corruption of moral principles, propriety or purity.

1. An action that causes harm to others; extreme cruelty.
2. A trait of extreme cruelty.
3. Given to vice, immorality, or depravity.

1. To reduce the value or impair the quality of.
2. To corrupt morally; to debase.
3. To make ineffective; to invalidate.
4. Etymology: from Latin vitiatus, past participle of vitiare, "to make faulty, injure, spoil, corrupt"; from vitium, "fault, defect, blemish, crime, vice".

1. Injury, contamination, impairment of use or efficiency.
2. A change in a process that impairs utility or reduces efficiency.
3. Nullification by the destruction of a legal force; rendering something null: "The court made a vitiation of the contract."
4. The act of vitiating, or the state of being vitiated; deprivation; corruption; invalidation; such as, the vitiation of the blood.

Depigmented areas of skin.

Concerning vitiligo.

1. A skin condition in which there is loss of pigment (color) from areas of skin, resulting in irregular white patches that feel like normal skin.
2. Etymology: Latin vitiligo, "a kind of tetter" (any of various skin diseases; such as, eczema, psoriasis, or herpes, characterized by eruptions and itching); coined by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a Roman physician and writer of the early first century; from vitium, "fault, blemish, taint". 3. A condition in which the skin turns white due to the loss of melanocytes.

These melanocytes, or cells, produce melanin, the pigment that gives the skin its characteristic color.

Melanocytes also impart color to the retina of the eye and the mucous membrane tissues lining the inside of the mouth, nose, genital and rectal areas.

In vitiligo, the melanocytes are mysteriously destroyed, leaving depigmented patches of skin on different parts of the body. The hair that grows in areas affected by vitiligo may also turn white.

Vitiligo is more noticeable in darker skinned people because of the contrast of white patches against dark skin.

There is a sudden or gradual appearance of flat areas of normal-feeling skin with complete pigment loss. Lesions appear as flat areas with no pigment and with a darker border. The edges are sharply defined but irregular.

Frequently affected areas are the face, elbows and knees, hands and feet, and genitalia.

Vitiligo is a common disorder. It occurs in 1-2% of people in the U.S. and affects both sexes and all races equally.

Vitiligo is never present at birth. It crops up between the ages of 4 and 30 in about half of cases and before age 40 in 95% of cases. More than 30% of people with vitiligo have a family history of the disorder, pointing to the presence of genetic factors capable of contributing to the condition.

As the skin gradually loses its color, patch by patch, other people often treat the person with vitiligo like a leper, thinking he/she has a contagious skin disease. In fact, vitiligo is called "white leprosy" in India. Women with it are often discriminated against in marriage. If they develop vitiligo after marriage, it can be grounds for divorce.

In people with vitiligo, the melanocytes self-destruct, probably because of an autoimmune reaction in which the body mistakenly attacks its own cells. The resulting white patches of skin may enlarge and increase in number for a while, and then the condition may stabilize, only to start up again later.

Injury, illness, a bad sunburn and severe stress have been known to provoke the onset or progression of vitiligo.

Vitiligo is sometimes associated with more serious disorders that also have an autoimmune cause, including: hyperthyroidism (overactivity of the thyroid gland), adrenocortical insufficiency (the adrenal gland does not produce enough cortisol), alopecia areata (patches of baldness), and pernicious anemia (a low level of red blood cells caused by the failure of the body to absorb vitamin B¹²).

Viciousness; depravity.

A fault, defect, or vice.

Liable to, or deserving, vituperation, or severe censure.

1. To rebuke or to criticize harshly or abusively; berate.
2. To use harshly abusive language; to rail.
3. To attack someone in a violently abusive or a harshly critical language; to revile.

1. Marked by harshly abusive criticism.
2. Using, containing, or marked by harshly abusive censure; scathing, blistering, scalding.

A description of someone who uses language that contains or includes harshly abusive information about someone.