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
He did this very unwillingly, for it was his desire to do every thing in his power to meliorate the condition of his Protestant friends.
From Henry IV, Makers of History by John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
Some years ago several pious individuals undertook to meliorate the condition of the prisons.
From American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville
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
Will this rapid intellectual progress tend ultimately to meliorate the condition of mankind?
From Curiosities of Medical Experience by J. G. (John Gideon) Millingen
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
Among the better classes conventionality has, doubtless, somewhat meliorated their condition.
From The Land of Thor by J. Ross (John Ross) Browne
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 James Fenimore Cooper
Though meliorated much since it first gave birth to man, it is not now fitted to nurture beings as refined as it will be centuries hence.
From Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism by Allen Putnam
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
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
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
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
That period, however, was only eight months distant, and she pleased herself with the intention of meliorating her plan in the meantime, and preparing to put it in practice.
From Cecilia; Or, Memoirs of an Heiress — Volume 1 by Fanny Burney
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.
