meliorate
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of meliorate
1545–55; < Latin meliōrātus (past participle of meliōrāre ) to make better, improve, equivalent to meliōr- (stem of melior ) better + -ātus -ate 1
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:
“I consider such easy vehicles of knowledge, more happily calculated than any other, to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry and meliorate the morals of an enlightened and free People.”
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 15, 2021
They refine the mind, they elevate views, they meliorate passions and keep alive affections.
From Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 by Various
This Howard felt, and, by his efforts to meliorate their condition, he became the acknowledged prince of philanthropists, and earned an immortal and sacred fame.
From Recollections of Windsor Prison; Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection by John N. Reynolds
The war concluded, his attention was directed to Italy, and he sought to meliorate the condition of that country; but Austria would not hear even of the discussion of Italian affairs.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 22, August, 1859 by Various
He said it was too late to plant maize, and therefore he should sow turnips, which would help to meliorate and prepare it for next year.
From A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson by Watkin Tench
He began to treat for peace, and to harmonize discordant spirits, so that affairs might be meliorated, by reason of what the Spaniards requested.
Thus I find my grandfather writing, in a report on the North Esk Bridge: “A less waterway might have sufficed, but the valleys may come to be meliorated by drainage.”
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson
So that Nature hereby is only advanced and meliorated, and the Light thereof, or human Reason, by being kept within its due bounds, and regulated by a superior Light, is only made useful.
From Dialogues on the Supersensual Life by Jakob Böhme
You are right in thinking that this first impulse of 1789, has, notwithstanding our misfortunes, greatly meliorated the situation of the French people.
From Memoirs of General Lafayette : with an Account of His Visit to America and His Reception By the People of the United States; From His Arrival, August 15th, to the Celebration at Yorktown, October 19th, 1824. by Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette
The human heart seems to be meliorated and softened by age.
From Anna St. Ives by Thomas Holcroft
I trust that a brighter future is to come, not from the desolation, but from gradual, meliorating changes of the present.
From Harvard Classics Volume 28 Essays English and American by Charles William Eliot
Beginning by formulating plans for meliorating the condition of the slaves on his plantation in French Guiana, his philanthropic thoughts soon turned homeward.
From Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
Where shall we trace him next, the migrant man, To try once more his meliorating plan?
From The Columbiad by Joel Barlow
Blount's one meliorating softness during the years of exile had manifested itself in an effort to keep track of Debbleby.
From The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush by Francis Lynde
Yet the pious admonitions of her father, and the example of her cousin, assisted by the meliorating influence of time, had a gradual though slow effect, in changing grief into meek resignation.
From The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 An Historical Novel by Jane West
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.
