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, to reform a profligate man; to reform corrupt manners or morals. The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it. Swift.

ed; change from worse to better; correction or amendment of life, manners, or of anything vicious or corrupt; as, the reformation of manners; reformation of the age; reformation of abuses. Satire lashes vice into reformation. Dryden.

etribution hereafter, that in this world virtuous persons are very often unfortunate, and vicious persons prosperous. Addison.

Addison. The labor of a day will not build up a virtuous habit on the ruins of an old and vicious character. Buckminster.

Inclining to shrew; disposing to curse or scold; hence, vicious; malicious; evil; wicked; mischievous; vexatious; rough; unfair; shrewish. [Obs.] Chaucer. [Egypt] hath many shrewd havens, because of the great rocks that ben strong and dangerous to pass by. Sir J. Mandeville. Every of this happy number That have endured…

foul back street of a city, especially one filled with a poor, dirty, degraded, and often vicious population; any low neighborhood or dark retreat; -- usually in the plural; as, Westminster slums are haunts for theives. Dickens.

; to snatch away. Curbed and snipped in my younger years by fear of my parents from those vicious excrescences to which that age was subject. Fuller. The captain seldom ordered anything out of the ship's stores . . . but I snipped some of it for my own share. De Foe.

Under the usual shape or size; small; dwarfish. [Poetic] His dwarf, a vicious undershapen thing. Tennyson.

Not gentle; lacking good breeding or delicacy; harsh. Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind. Shak. That ungentle flavor which distinguishes nearly all our native and uncultivated grapes. Hawthorne. -- Un*gen"tle*ness, n. -- Un*gen"tly, adv.

Being a vagabond; strolling and idle or vicious.

Vicious; corrupt. [Obs.] Shak.

To make vicious, faulty, or imperfect; to render defective; to injure the substance or qualities of; to impair; to contaminate; to spoil; as, exaggeration vitiates a style of writing; sewer gas vitiates the air. A will vitiated and growth out of love with the truth disposes the understanding to error and delusion. Sout…

Viciousness; depravity. The perverseness and vitiosity of man's will. South.

See Vicious, Viciously, Viciousness.

and with against before the thing to be avoided; as, to be watchful against the growth of vicious habits. "Many a watchful night." Shak. "Happy watchful shepherds." Milton. 'Twixt prayer and watchful love his heart dividing. Keble.

A low, vicious young woman; a drab; a strumpet. She shall be called his wench or his leman. Chaucer. It is not a digression to talk of bawds in a discourse upon wenches. Spectator.

a manner, or with motives and designs, contrary to the divine law or the law of morality; viciously; corruptly; immorally. I have sinned, and I have done wickedly. 2 Sam. xxiv. 17.

A vicious habit of a horse, consisting in the swallowing of air; -- usually associated with crib-biting, or cribbing. See Cribbing, 4.

A house in which idle and vicious persons are confined to labor.

Hence, any brutish or vicious character.