6 uses
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Definition
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
- Restricted, as a child, to this cocoon of her family's spinning, she cultivated quiet and private pleasures.4 — Spring (14% in)
cultivated = enhanced the growth or development of
- 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.2 — Autumn (94% in)
- 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.3 — Winter (14% in)
- 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.3 — Winter (41% in)
- Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene.4 — Spring (60% in)
- 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.4 — Spring (81% in)
There are no more uses of "cultivate" in The Bluest Eye.
Typical Usage
(best examples)