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
Kindness never fails to soften and meliorate his feelings, and harshness, injury, and contempt to harden and blunt them.
From The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians by Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
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
We then fled to the country, and there only time could meliorate the deep-consuming grief by which he had become wholly possessed.
From The Devil's Elixir Vol. I (of 2) by Hoffmann, E. T. A. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus)
Is it true that the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the woful experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no sort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds?
From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12) by Burke, Edmund
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 strength of the stalk is also diffused by it through the leaves, and the whole mass becomes equally meliorated.
From Nicotiana Or The Smoker's and Snuff-Taker's Companion by Meller, Henry James
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 Kippis, Andrew
That something the manure of birds, meliorated and altered by time, had supplied, and lo! the glorious results were before his eyes.
From The Crater by Cooper, James Fenimore
The human heart seems to be meliorated and softened by age.
From Anna St. Ives by Holcroft, Thomas
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 Spooner, Lysander
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 Eliot, Charles William
We thought that they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all of preserving, the accessions of science and literature, as the order of Providence should successively produce them.
From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12) by Burke, Edmund
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 Horne, Charles F. (Charles Francis)
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 Stanton, Henry B.
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.
