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Domesticate   Listen
verb
Domesticate  v. t.  (past & past part. domesticated; pres. part. domesticating)  
1.
To make domestic; to habituate to home life; as, to domesticate one's self.
2.
To cause to be, as it were, of one's family or country; as, to domesticate a foreign custom or word.
3.
To tame or reclaim from a wild state; as, to domesticate wild animals; to domesticate a plant.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Domesticate" Quotes from Famous Books



... direction? The excessive tameness, too, of the young rabbit, while easily explicable as a result of unconscious selection, is not easily explained as a result of acquired habit. No particular care is taken to tame or teach or domesticate rabbits. They are bred for food, or for profit or appearance, and they are left to themselves most of their time. As Sir J. Sebright notices with some surprise, the domestic rabbit "is not often visited, and seldom handled, and yet ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... lady, it was chased by some dogs, and ran away to the woods near the town, and never came back again. Dogs will always hunt tame fawns when they can get near them, so it seems a pity to domesticate them only to be killed in so cruel a way. The forest is the best home for these pretty creatures, though even there they have many enemies beside the hunter. The bear, the wolf, and the wolverine kill them. Their only means of defence lies in their fleetness of foot. ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... in poetry has recently been defined as "the man who regards his passions as their own excuse for being; who does not domesticate them either by understanding their cause or by conceiving their ideal goal."[28:1] One will readily appreciate the application of this definition to Walt Whitman. What little unity there is in this poet's world, is the composition ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... enduring and flourishing under a more or less extensive range of temperature and other climatic conditions; and, secondly, that most plants and some animals are, more or less closely, adapted to climates similar to those of their native habitats. In order to domesticate or naturalize the former class in countries not extremely differing from that from which the species was brought, it will not be necessary to acclimatize, in the strict sense of the word. In the case ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... before he is old enough to be put to work), that it is only in countries where there is a super-abundance of forest in which he can be allowed to grow to maturity at his own "charges" (so to speak) that it is worth while to attempt to domesticate and make use of him. For most purposes three horses are more "handy" than one elephant. The elephant is caught when he is already grown up, and then trained. It is as a matter of economy that he is not bred in ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... many years, Jack? He'll play on a dog-fight better than you can on a penny-whistle: as soon as he chooses they're sitting one on each side of the gramophone, listening to Their Master's Voice. Vivisection?—Farrell's an ass. The only inhuman thing I've ever known Jack do was to domesticate a wild-cat and restore her to the woods unprotected by her natural amenities. These people hear a shindy going on in the laboratory in '—' Street, and conclude that he's holding the wrong sort of tea-party. Now, if he'd ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... empirical unities, foreign to mind in spite of their order, and unintelligible in spite of their clearness. Reason fails to assimilate in them precisely that which makes them real, namely, their presence here and now, in this order and number. The form and quality of them we can retain, domesticate, and weave into the texture of reflection, but their existence and individuality remain a datum of sense needing to be verified anew at every moment and actually receiving continual verification or disproof while ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... restraint, effort and self-denial; mischief, and a spirit of rebellion and destruction. In its native state, untouched by the rod of discipline, the child is wild. Now, you must force a crooked tree to grow straight; you must break a wild colt to domesticate it, and you must whip a wild boy to make him fit for the company of civilized people. Being self-willed, he will seek to follow the bent of his own inclinations; without intelligence or experience and by nature prone to evil, ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... no longer sewing-machines—they are Keeley motors for mystery and perpetual motion. Women have views now—they are no longer content to be looked at merely; they must see for themselves; and the more they see, the more they wish to domesticate man and emancipate woman. It's my private opinion that if we are to get along with them at all the best thing to do is to let 'em alone. I have always found I was better off in the abstract, and ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... from the aurochs' calves; but does not any cow shrink from any calf not her own? The American Bison, with which you are all pretty familiar, is very similar to the one just mentioned. There have been several attempts made to domesticate the American bison, and have been so far successful. The size and strength of the animal make it probable that if domesticated, it would be of ...
— Chatterbox Stories of Natural History • Anonymous

... &c. (insert) 300; shelve, pitch, camp, lay down, deposit, reposit[obs3]; cradle; moor, tether, picket; pack, tuck in; embed, imbed; vest, invest in. billet on, quarter upon, saddle with; load, lade, freight; pocket, put up, bag. inhabit &c. (be present) 186; domesticate, colonize; take root, strike root; anchor; cast anchor, come to an anchor; sit down, settle down; settle; take up one's abode, take up one's quarters; plant oneself, establish oneself, locate oneself; squat, perch, hive, se nicher[Fr], bivouac, burrow, get a footing; encamp, pitch one's tent; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... though the fowls are smaller than the American game fowl. Each of the twelve wild cocks I have had in my hands had perfect five-pointed single combs, and the domestic cock of Bontoc also commonly has this perfect comb. I know of no people within the Bontoc area who now systematically domesticate the wild fowl, though this was found to be the custom of the Ibilao southeast of Dupax in the Province of Nueva Vizcaya. Those people catch the ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... are sometimes called, the Small Folk, the Little People, or the Good People, are a race of tiny beings who domesticate themselves in a house of which some grown-up human being pays the rent and taxes. They are like small editions of men and women, they are too small and fragile for heavy work; they have not the strength of a man, but are ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... the use of metals. As long as the arts of metallurgy are unknown, the notice of the physical conditions of the country is confined to its Flora, its Fauna, and its stone quarries. What was there to cultivate? What was there to hunt or to domesticate? What was there to build with? Now, however, the questions change. What were the mineral resources of the soil? It is not necessary to enlarge on these. The use of coal as a fuel is wholly recent. On the other hand, certain varieties of it were used as ornaments—the ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... be easily made sensible of yours, and what you expect from it, provided you take a proper method? For, sometimes, signs and tokens (and even looks), uniformly practised, will do as well as words; as we see in such of the young of the brute creation as we are disposed to domesticate, and to teach to practise those little tricks, of which the aptness or docility of their natures makes ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... for a way to reach the next. He had no very definite idea what he wanted to do when he got there; possibly, if the undertaking seemed feasible, he might carry off one of the royal brood and amuse himself with trying to domesticate it. But, at any rate, he hoped to add something, by a closer inspection, to his rather inadequate ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... and scandal—unhappy children." Once he said to his wife, forlornly, "She is too clever, poor child. She has been talking to me like a marchioness of forty for the last half hour. If this keeps on I shall have to domesticate her great aunts in order to have ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick

... wilderness and on the prairies, we find a general impression that cultivation and refinement must weaken the race. Not at all; they simply domesticate it. Domestication is not weakness. A strong hand does not become less muscular under a kid glove; and a man who is a hero in a red shirt will also be a hero in a white one. Civilization, imperfect as it is, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... distinguished from those which are produced by climate, nourishment, by crossing races, and the difference determined which really exists between species. If these animals are of a nature to render services to domestic economy or agriculture, and if they breed there are the means to raise and domesticate them, and, so, to procure new resources. The Vigogne, the Lama, the Alpaca, the Tapir, the kanguroo, the Casoar and many others, will pershaps one day be ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various



Words linked to "Domesticate" :   accommodate, domesticise, cultivate, naturalize, beast, fauna, creature, reclaim, tame, animal, modify, break



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