cross-pollinate
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Etymology
Origin of cross-pollinate
First recorded in 1895–1900
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The bank thinks it can get its various lines of business—from consumer deposits to wealth management to investment banking—to cross-pollinate faster and fuel profits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
It would have been too tricky to cross-pollinate them.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2024
We cross-pollinate plants that have the attributes that we’re looking for.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 26, 2023
Unless you’re growing a multigraft espalier, or your neighbors have apple trees in their garden, to get good fruit set, you’ll need to plant more than one variety so the trees can cross-pollinate.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 21, 2023
They were virtually impossible to cross-pollinate and rarely generated hybrids.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
He travelled across India collecting seeds and brought them back to his farm where he cross-pollinated them.
From BBC ● May 25, 2026
Another common category is hybrid seeds, which are simply seeds from plants that have been cross-pollinated with a goal in mind.
From Salon ● Aug. 22, 2023
Often, the entertainment and the community orgs and causes are cross-pollinated.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2022
Scientists could collect seeds and test whether they might be cross-pollinated to produce fertile offspring.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
Mendel had chosen peas after deep consideration: the plants reproduced sexually, produced clearly identifiable variant traits, and could be cross-pollinated with some care.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Nuccio’s Nurseries offers more than 500 varieties of camellias, many created by cross-pollinating bees and then nurtured by the owners.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2025
“That brand recognition is amazing and is going to play such a role in cross-pollinating with other companies we have.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 6, 2023
In that same year, Markus Kobelt — a nurseryman in Buchs, Switzerland — developed his acclaimed Redlove apples after cross-pollinating red-fleshed varieties with Royal Gala and Braeburn apples.
From Salon ● Nov. 25, 2021
One pastel gray gown had so many blue flower appliqués that they actually spilled over, cross-pollinating onto the model’s bare chest as stick-on brooches.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 3, 2021
The amount of pollen produced by the Reed variety has always been considered ample for cross-pollinating the Potomac, even though the former has been a light producer of catkins.
From Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting Urbana, Illinois, August 28, 29 and 30, 1951 by Northern Nut Growers Association
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
