Learn English – What’s a parallel for ‘mitigate’, for worsening a good situation

expressionssingle-word-requests

I recently read an article claiming that employing some tactic was OK but could mitigate many of the good effects of the main action.

What word should the author have used, as mitigate means to improve or to lessen a negative, not to render a positive thing less good?

There may be no single word, but one keeps hovering around the edges of my memory…

EDIT:

Some have pointed out that this usage is correct because there is an authority for it. However, a survey of responses here seems to indicate that most people do not recognize this usage, and that view is what I'm basing this question on.

So to rephrase: what other word(s) could the author have used, to avoid confusion with the popular understanding of mitigate?

Best Answer

If you are looking for a word that means to make a good thing less good, rather than to make a bad thing worse, a possibility would be vitiate:-

To reduce the value or impair the quality of. [American Heritage Dictionary via The Free Dictionary]

or

to make faulty or imperfect [Collins English Dictionary via The Free Dictionary]

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