domesticate
Americanverb (used with object)
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domesticates,
present (3rd person singular)
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domesticated,
past participle, past
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domesticating
present participle
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to tame (an animal), especially by generations of breeding, to live in close association with human beings as a pet or work animal and usually creating a dependency so that the animal loses its ability to live in the wild.
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to adapt (a plant) so as to be cultivated by and beneficial to human beings.
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to accustom to household life or affairs.
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to take (something foreign, unfamiliar, etc.) for one's own use or purposes; adopt.
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to make more ordinary, familiar, acceptable, or the like.
to domesticate radical ideas.
verb (used without object)
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domesticates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
domesticated,
past participle, past
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domesticating
present participle
verb
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to bring or keep (wild animals or plants) under control or cultivation
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to accustom to home life
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to adapt to an environment
to domesticate foreign trees
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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domesticationnoun
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domesticatornoun
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overdomesticateverb (used with object)
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domesticableadjective
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domesticativeadjective
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nondomesticatedadjective
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nondomesticatingadjective
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undomesticableadjective
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undomesticatedadjective
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well-domesticatedadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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domesticatesimple
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domesticatessimple
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have domesticatedperfect
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has domesticatedperfect
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am domesticatingprogressive
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are domesticatingprogressive
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is domesticatingprogressive
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have been domesticatingperfect progressive
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has been domesticatingperfect progressive
Past
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domesticatedsimple
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had domesticatedperfect
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was domesticatingprogressive
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were domesticatingprogressive
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had been domesticatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of domesticate
First recorded in 1635–45; from Medieval Latin domesticātus (past participle of domesticāre ), equivalent to domestic- domestic + -ātus -ate 1
Explanation
To domesticate something is to tame a wild animal or plant so it can live with people. Dogs and cats are called domesticated animals because they live with us peacefully. Nobody knows who first domesticated a wolf, but whoever it was was a very important person. If people hadn't started living with wolves, slowly domesticating them and teaching them to get along with people, wolves would never have evolved into today's dogs. We usually talk about how to domesticate animals, but wild plants can be domesticated too.
Vocabulary lists containing domesticate
The Middle East and Central Asia - Introductory
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The Middle East and Central Asia - Middle School
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The Middle East and Central Asia - High School
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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.
See Examples For:
The accompanying material may occasionally press too hard in trying to domesticate what is, in the end, undomesticable, but the books themselves continue to exert their peculiar, unaccommodating force.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
"We can use these modern tools to domesticate undomesticated crops."
From Science Daily ● Jan. 11, 2026
And yet none of them voted against it; some tried to domesticate it or expressed hope that South Carolina would be ready for a bill this extreme in the future.
From Slate ● Nov. 21, 2025
Corn was born here about 9,000 years ago, when Mesoamerican farmers first started to domesticate the wild grass known as teosinte.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2025
These four were evidently among the easiest to domesticate of all wild fruits.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
We sense early on, from Mortensen’s delicate handling of their courtship, that this isn’t some musty rehash of the trope where she civilizes him and he domesticates her.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 31, 2024
So these captive wolves have taken on an uneasy status: not wild, nor yet domesticates.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 24, 2020
Cats are called commensal domesticates, Levy reminded the jury, which means they choose to live with humans, but they can revert back to feral state.
From The New Yorker ● Oct. 12, 2014
The most important ingredient for cheese-making is milk and only domesticates can be milked.
From BBC ● Dec. 12, 2012
Indians adopted Mexican crops, and many of them discarded many of their local domesticates, piecemeal; squash was domesticated independently, corn arrived from Mexico around A.D.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Researchers also found DNA from cultivated plants, domesticated animals and Mediterranean red coral.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 4, 2026
Dusky farmerfish in East Asia grow “crops” of red algae by assiduously “weeding out less palatable foods” and have effectively domesticated a type of shrimp whose waste fertilizes the algae and boosts yields.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
But there’s also some solid evidence that humans domesticated ourselves, selecting tameness over aggression.
From Salon ● Apr. 23, 2026
Sheep were first domesticated approximately 10,500 years ago in the Middle East, and were eventually brought to British shores by Neolithic farmers some time around 4000BC.
From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2026
One might therefore have been deceived into supposing that chickpeas were domesticated in India.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
UFO mythology, and especially its mock-scientific terminology, is a way of domesticating the unknown.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
But whereas people artificially selected against aggressive traits when domesticating dogs, similar changes seem to have happened naturally in bonobos—a process known as “self-domestication” that might also have occurred in humans.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 12, 2024
"At Titicaca, Andeans accomplished the remarkable achievement of domesticating plants like the potato, leaving behind a nutritious legacy that is still appreciated today," he said.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 21, 2023
Humans have a long history of domesticating and crossing wild plants to produce new generations with better flavor and higher yields.
From Salon ● Dec. 14, 2023
Finally, speakers of ancestral Afroasiatic languages may have been involved in domesticating the crops native to Ethiopia, and they certainly introduced Fertile Crescent crops to North Africa.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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.
