- a variation of ameliorate.
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
The duty devolved upon me, to seek to meliorate their sad condition, as degraded and emaciated, wandering in ignorance, and wearing away a short existence in one continued succession of hardships in procuring food.
Rather let us say that that is very natural which nature permits us to meliorate in her handiwork.
From The Training of a Public Speaker by Grenville Kleiser
The face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate, and man is born.
From The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature Representative Prose and Verse by Various
It has been thought by many that frosts meliorate the ground, and that they are in general salubrious to mankind.
From The Botanic Garden A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: the Economy of Vegetation by Erasmus Darwin
The love of power was his ruling passion;—with him no gentle or generous sentiment meliorated the harshness of authority, or directed it to acts of beneficence.
From A Sicilian Romance by Ann Ward Radcliffe
We pass over the administration of Geary, the third of the Kansas Governors,—a period in which the ravages of the marauders were continued, but under meliorated circumstances.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 04, February, 1858 by Various
The potatoes, which had first been brought from the Cape of Good Hope, were greatly meliorated by change of soil; and, with proper cultivation, would be superior to those produced in most other countries.
From Narrative of the Voyages Round the World, Performed by Captain James Cook : with an Account of His Life During the Previous and Intervening Periods by Andrew Kippis
Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat meliorated their condition.
From The Land of Thor by J. Ross (John Ross) Browne
It has greatly meliorated the condition of the laborious part, that is to say, of the mass of every community, by procuring for them a day of weekly rest.
From Evidence of Christianity by William Paley
Mr. Buxton's public life was devoted to meliorating the condition of the unfortunate classes of society.
From Sketches of Reforms and Reformers, of Great Britain and Ireland by Henry B. Stanton
Where shall we trace him next, the migrant man, To try once more his meliorating plan?
From The Columbiad by Joel Barlow
Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition.
From No Treason, Vol. VI. The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner
And many a thousand summers My apples ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell.
From May-Day and Other Pieces by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Agriculture appeared to me to be in a highly improved state: there are artificial grasses and meliorating crops.
From A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium by Richard Boyle Bernard
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.
