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.
“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
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 Tench, Watkin
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
Lords deliver lydeum lectures; ladies patronize ragged schools; committees of duchesses meliorate the condition of needlewomen.
From Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Volume 2 by Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Among the various improvements which struggling humanity has gradually engrafted on the belligerent code, none have contributed more to diminish the calamities of war, than those which meliorate the condition of prisoners.
From The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 Commander in Chief of the American Forces During the War which Established the Independence of his Country and First President of the United States by Marshall, John
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.
