All 6 Uses of

cultivate
in
The Bluest Eye

Nor were they from that sensitive breed of young girl, gone wrong at the hands of fate, forced to cultivate an outward brittleness in order to protect her springtime from further shock, but knowing full well she was cut out for better things, and could make the right man happy.†
Chpt 2

cultivate = develop, grow, or prepare for growing crops

They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds—cooled—and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.†
Chpt 3

cultivated = developed, grown, or prepared for growing crops

We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness.†
Chpt 3

Restricted, as a child, to this cocoon of her family's spinning, she cultivated quiet and private pleasures.
Chpt 4 *

cultivated = enhanced the growth or development of

Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene.†
Chpt 4

cultivated = developed, grown, or prepared for growing crops

She, like a good Victorian parody, learned from her husband all that was worth learning—to separate herself in body, mind, and spirit from all that suggested Africa; to cultivate the habits, tastes, preferences that her absent father-in-law and foolish mother-in-law would have approved.†
Chpt 4

cultivate = develop, grow, or prepare for growing crops

Definitions:

(1) (cultivate)
enhance growth or development
in 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)
meaning too rare to warrant focus:

The word form cultivator is commonly used to describe a machine used to prepare soil for growing crops.