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
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
In the ’90s, he held regular gatherings at his Angelino Heights home where community activists like the late Levi Kingston would cross-pollinate with emerging young essayists such as Lynell George and Rubén Martínez.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2022
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
The comic opera tradition — which traditionally has included not only spoken dialogue, but also smaller voices relative to grander works in the repertory — has since cross-pollinated with neighboring forms like the musical.
From New York Times ● Dec. 23, 2022
Often, the entertainment and the community orgs and causes are cross-pollinated.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 29, 2022
They had to be cross-pollinated by another plant belonging to a genetically different variety of their species.
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
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
“We heard a lot of great feedback, and we saw audiences cross-pollinating between the two art forms.”
From Washington Post ● Mar. 5, 2020
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.
