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
“I see this space as being an incubator. We know that when you cross-pollinate creatives, good things happen.”
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 4, 2024
We cross-pollinate plants that have the attributes that we’re looking for.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 26, 2023
"One of the Madonna's skills is that she's able to cross-pollinate ideas between different projects," said Price.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 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
Soon, plants grown from the old seeds were cross-pollinated with modern, high-yielding varieties, but it took years for any perceptible changes to really take hold.
From Salon ● Nov. 20, 2023
To Mr. Sprung, musical styles existed to be cross-pollinated.
From New York Times ● Aug. 2, 2023
Scientists could collect seeds and test whether they might be cross-pollinated to produce fertile offspring.
From Textbooks ● Jun. 9, 2022
A third advantage of the Fertile Crescent flora is that it includes a high percentage of hermaphroditic “selfers”—that is, plants that usually pollinate themselves but that are occasionally cross-pollinated.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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 is not who we are as a city. You need to be out cross-pollinating ideas, interacting with humans.”
From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2022
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.
