MEANING
1. To prepare land for growing plants or to grow and tend a particular crop.
2. To make a sustained effort to develop a quality, ability, habit, or condition.
3. To make a special effort to establish or strengthen a relationship, often because it may be useful.
Use it for
describing managed cultivation rather than wild growth; distinguishing the preparation of land from simple possession; giving a historical landscape a purposeful human activityDescribes deliberate, sustained development rather than an accidental effect, with agricultural and social senses distinguished. Writing functions: Causation / Relationships, Analysis / Interpretation.
Words that belong together
- cultivate the land
- cultivate a crop
- cultivate rice
On the page
The records distinguish land cultivated for food from common grazing ground.
The family cultivated the lower terraces and left the exposed ridge untouched.
The course seeks to cultivate judgment rather than memorization alone.
He cultivated an air of indifference that was difficult to maintain in private.
She cultivated the editor’s friendship long before submitting the manuscript.
Word forms
- Base
- cultivate
- Past tense
- cultivated
- Past participle
- cultivated
- Present participle
- cultivating
Full tense & aspect guide
- Present
- cultivate
- Present continuous
- am/is/are cultivating
- Present perfect
- have/has cultivated
- Present perfect continuous
- have/has been cultivating
- Past
- cultivated
- Past continuous
- was/were cultivating
- Past perfect
- had cultivated
- Past perfect continuous
- had been cultivating
- Future
- will cultivate
- Future continuous
- will be cultivating
- Future perfect
- will have cultivated
- Future perfect continuous
- will have been cultivating
Choose the auxiliary that agrees with your subject. These are constructions of one word, not separate entries.
Usage notes
Transitive: cultivates, cultivated, cultivated, cultivating; future will cultivate. Cultivate land, a crop, a skill, an attitude, or a relationship. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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