cultivated
Americanadjective
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prepared and used for raising crops; tilled.
cultivated land.
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produced or improved by cultivation, as a plant.
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educated; refined; cultured.
cultivated tastes.
adjective
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cultured, refined, or educated
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subjected to tillage or cultivation
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tilled and broken up
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(of plants) specially bred or improved by cultivation
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of cultivated
Explanation
The adjective cultivated is used to describe someone who is polite and civilized. The cultivated people at the party would be very offended by crude behavior. Someone who's cultivated is knowledgeable or at least familiar with the arts, current events, history. He or she probably has traveled widely, or at least has read about other people and places. In other words, a cultivated person is a citizen of the world. As it applies to farming, cultivated soil is tilled, or churned, to prepare it for planting.
Vocabulary lists containing cultivated
"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
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Persepolis
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100 SAT words Beginning with "C"
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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.
Maybe I’d just cultivated too much shark knowledge, well aware that these apex predators are docile and do not hunt humans like they do in Peter Benchley’s novel.
From Salon ● Oct. 9, 2026
This latest decline is down not just to hot weather, which has been slightly mitigated by recent rainfall, but also a reduction in cultivated areas -- pared back 1.9 percent in the past year.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
“He cultivated relationships with sworn law enforcement officers and used those relationships to further his personal and financial interests,” Anderson said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2026
That transformation will likely go beyond the energy and water footprints of data centers or electricity generation, promising everything from affordable and palatable cultivated meats to lower-impact precision agriculture to hyperefficient jet engines.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
His voice reminded me a little of Willem’s, deep, cultivated, the German with only a trace of Dutch accent.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
