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.
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“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
Now, our Government has never departed from its purpose and its policy, to meliorate the law of nations, so as to extirpate this business of private war on the ocean.
From Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York by A. F. Warburton
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
These men left their first country to improve their condition; they quit their resting-place to meliorate it still more; fortune awaits them everywhere, but happiness they cannot attain.
From American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville
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 Harriet Beecher Stowe
The rice grounds are meliorated merely by letting water into them; but for the other grains, where the soil requires it, they use dung, night-soil, ashes, and the like.
Nevertheless, man's ever active ingenuity constantly increases the number of meliorated contrivances.
From By Water to the Columbian Exposition by Johanna S. Wisthaler
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
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
I was never duly sensible, till your writings made me so, of the transcendent beauty and sublimity of Christian morals; nor did I submit my heart and temper to their chastening and meliorating influences.
From The Friendships of Women by William Rounseville Alger
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
But to undertake expeditions with a design of civilizing the world, and meliorating its condition, is a noble object.
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
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
Perhaps next in importance in meliorating the condition of the slaves, is the adoption of regulations for their religious instruction, and the education of their children.
From The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 by Various
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