Both Uses of
cultivate
in
Moby Dick
- No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences of the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about such a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most fishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their tarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea, without seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance.†
Chpt 43-45 *cultivate = develop, grow, or prepare for growing crops
- For three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire breadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and most thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and affluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room and bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman arches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or broken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk counties; and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires stand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly corrupt and often lawless life.†
Chpt 52-54cultivated = developed, grown, or prepared for growing crops
Definitions:
-
(1)
(cultivate) enhance growth or developmentin various senses, including:
- to grow crops or prepare land for them
- enhance a relationship -- especially for a purpose
- develop discernment (better recognition of differences) in taste or judgment
- to grow a culture in a petri dish
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) The word form cultivator is commonly used to describe a machine used to prepare soil for growing crops.