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Fertilize   /fˈərtəlˌaɪz/   Listen
Fertilize

verb
(past & past part. fertilized; pres. part. fertilizing)
1.
Provide with fertilizers or add nutrients to.  Synonyms: feed, fertilise.
2.
Make fertile or productive.  Synonyms: fecundate, fertilise.
3.
Introduce semen into (a female).  Synonyms: fecundate, fertilise, inseminate.



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"Fertilize" Quotes from Famous Books



... the rivers swell and overflow the adjacent shores, and run down with such continued rapidity, that the water may be tasted fresh at sea at the distance of six or seven miles from the mouths: these overflowings fertilize the banks and adjacent country, and render the shores of Borneo, like the plains of Egypt, luxuriantly rich. Susceptible of the highest possible culture, particularly in wet grain, in the dry season the coast, from ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... however, is greatly inferior, as it is small and thin and lacking in all the qualities necessary for a fine leaf. The planters now adopted new methods of culture, and cultivated several species of the plant known as Oronoko and little Frederick, although they did not fertilize the fields, even when the soil became impoverished, but simply took new ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... no plowman, nothing but the farmer to crank the tractor and start it on its way," Dick exulted, as the uncanny mechanism turned up the brown soil and continued unguided, ever spiraling toward the field's center. "Plow, harrow, roll, seed, fertilize, cultivate, harvest—all from the front porch. And where the farmer can buy juice from a power company, all he, or his wife, will have to do is press the button, and he to his newspaper, and she ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... invent and fertilize opportunity for others—men who invent ways of making men see values—men who create values and who present people with values they want to work out, are going to get anything—either money or work, from ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... France is the legitimate, though far younger sister of Germany; taught by her, but not born of her, but of a common mother. I see, at least begin to see, what she has learned from England, and what the bloody rain of the revolution has done to fertilize her ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. This is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man's fields by the sweat of the poor man's brow. Ordinary tyranny, oppression, excessive taxation—these bear lightly on the happiness of the mass of the community compared with a fraudulent currency and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... contrivances; and while they exist the doctrine of purpose or final cause is not likely to die out. Now, in the contrasted case, that of pine-trees, the vast superabundance of pollen would be sheer waste if the intention was to fertilize the seeds of the same tree, or if there were any provision for insect-carriage; but with wide-breeding as the end, and the wind which "bloweth where it listeth" as the means, no one is entitled to declare that pine-pollen is in wasteful excess. The cheapness of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... a neighbor, Osime Favet, the mayor, on his way to fertilize his fields, seated on the manure-wagon, with his feet hanging over the side. She ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... is the crux," said the lady. "It is unendurable. Utter despair or dull resignation—there is no third alternative; that is the arid soil in which our existence is rooted, and on which a thousand stagnant ideas fall; they cannot fertilize the ground, but they supply food for the etiolated flowers of our desert souls. Never believe in indifference! Indifference is either despair or resignation. Then each woman takes up the pursuit which, according to her character, seems to promise ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... chestnut-groves, with their loads of fruit, and the short sweet grass on which cattle depasture in summer, and the wild flowers from which the bees elaborate their honey. Overtopping all are the fields of snow, the great reservoirs of the springs and rivers which fertilize the country. This arrangement admitted, moreover, of far greater variety, both of climate and of produce, than could possibly obtain on the plain. There is an eternal winter at the summit of these mountains, and an almost perpetual summer ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... after Indian fashion, placing two fish into the holes into which the kernels were dropped. The Indians connected with this act some superstitious rite, but the white people knew that the fish were necessary to fertilize the sterile soil. Soon they used improved methods, and their harvests were much greater than those of ...
— Three Young Pioneers - A Story of the Early Settlement of Our Country • John Theodore Mueller

... public money and increasing the power and patronage of this Government was left open in the concession of even a limited power of Congress to improve harbors and rivers—a field which millions will not fertilize to the satisfaction of those local and speculating interests by which these projects are in general gotten up. There can not be a just and equal distribution of public burdens and benefits under such a system, nor can the States be relieved ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... snickered: "They'll help fertilize the soil, which I'm told needs it." His early struggles had ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... a vast lake, upon whose bosom ships can navigate; but which is useless to the country, because no stream issues therefrom to fertilize ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... land remains poor land, and good land remains good land; and if you want to farm good land, you better stay right in the corn belt. You can't grow anything on these Eastern lands without fertilizer and the more you fertilize the more you must, and still the land remains as poor as ever. Just leave off the fertilizer one year and your crop is not worth harvesting. These lands never were any good and ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... itself disappears and dies. The battle lasts all day, beginning when the earliest rays gild the mountain tops, and continues until the West is driven to the edge of the world. As the evening precedes the morning, so the West, by a figure of speech, may be said to fertilize the Dawn. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... white curlews swooped and curved and opened their pine wood beaks to squawk a prayer for dead fish. But the workers did not stop to watch. Their food also was in question. They must pluck the black seaweed to fertilize their field. ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... three generations of us pour out our blood to fertilize Italian ground, it's not too much to pay to chase those drilled curs.' Luciano spoke ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... animals, it is the process of union of the egg or ovum of the female with the spermatozooen of the male. When a successful union of these two cells takes place a new being is started. The process of fertilization or fecundation is also known as impregnation and conception. We say, to fertilize (chiefly, however, when speaking of plants) or to fecundate an ovum, or to impregnate a female or woman, and to conceive a child. We say the woman has become ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... out as an independent philosophy in the East; but almost at the same time, and this is no accident, it conquered new regions in the dogmatic of the Church through the spread of the writings of the pseudo-Dionysius; it began to fertilize Christian mysticism, and filled the worship with a ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... which has been carefully examined,—of two kinds of sea-weed, of which the male element of the one, which we may call A, fertilizes the female element of the other, B; while the male element of B will not fertilize the female element of A; so that, while the former experiment seems to show us that they are 'varieties', the latter leads to the conviction that they ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley

... empties into Lake Huron and is navigable for sixty miles. These, with the others we have named, interlock their branches running through different parts of southern Michigan, and while they beautify the landscape they afford water-power and fertilize the soil. ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... channelled rows to let the inundation flow through hundreds of little lanes of intersection and canals between the beds, and then banking them up at the entrance when a sufficient quantity of water has entered. In this way they fertilize and refresh the soil, which else would parch under the continuous sun. And this, indeed, is all the fertilization they need,—so strong is the soil all over the Campagna. The accretions and decay of thousands of years have covered it with a loam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... Empire to-day; but they gush forth impetuously from impulsive and loving hearts, and spread like living waters which no artificially-cut stones can bank and confine, but which must expand freely in the land they fertilize. ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... of a journalistic Greenland: limitless plains of empty white paper extending about them as far as the eye could reach, while life depended upon their making these terrible voids productive; and they shrank appalled from the task, knowing no means to fertilize the barrens; having no talent to bring the still snows into harvests, and already feeling-in the chill of Mr. Martin's remarks—a touch of the frost that might ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... destructive disease of asparagus, producing reddish or black pustules on the stems and branches. Late in the fall, burn all affected plants. Fertilize liberally and cultivate thoroughly. During the cutting season, permit no plants to mature and cut all wild asparagus plants in vicinity once a week. Rust may be partially controlled by spraying with bordeaux, 5-5-50, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... methinks, if he was forc'd to toil Like me each day—to cultivate the soil, To prune the trees, to keep the fences round; Reduce the rising to the level ground, Draw water from the fountains near at hand To cheer and fertilize the thirsty land, He would not trade in trifles such as these, And drive the peaceful linnets ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various

... and—and you, William, and those like you, that must go. It is hard—no doubt it is extremely hard, but it is as irresistible as—as death itself. Civilization is compelled to crush the old order of things that it may fertilize the soil out of which grows the new. It is so in plant life, and in ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... from day to night, and the attenuated state of her atmosphere, which is never disturbed by storms; and that light vapours, rising from her valleys, fall in the manner of a gentle and refreshing dew to fertilize her fields." [452] Dr. H. W. M. Olbers is fully persuaded "that the moon is inhabited by rational creatures, and that its surface is more or less covered with a vegetation not very dissimilar to that of our own earth." Dr. ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... great Cul de Sac, and the small Cul de Sac. Gua-daloupe is encumbered with high mountains and precipices, to which the inhabitants used to convey their valuable effects in time of danger; but here are also beautiful plains watered by brooks and rivers, which fertilize the soil, enabling it to produce a great quantity of sugar, cotton, indigo, tobacco, and cassia; besides plenty of rice, potatoes, all kinds of pulse, and fruit peculiar to the island. The country is populous ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... to say that your thoughts always fertilize my brain. But you must be hungry, so I'll not tell you what I want ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... of her most useful treasures in most forbidding places. The nitrates which fertilize so much of Europe are drawn from the fiercest of South American deserts, and the gold which measures American commerce is mined in the arctic wilds of Alaska or in the almost inaccessible scarps of the ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... great pleasure in complying with the Professor's request, and followed him into every apartment. This library, my dear friend, is placed in one of the prettiest situations imaginable. Some meandering branches of the Iser intersect and fertilize considerable tracts of meadow land; equally rich in colour and (as I learnt) in produce: and terminated by some gently swelling hills, quite in the vicinity of the town. The whole had a perfectly English aspect. The rooms were numerous, and commanded a variety of views. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... and it keeps down the fire hazard. One bad fire in an ungrazed or unmown piece of brush-covered undergrowth can destroy in an hour 50 years of timber growth. If we plant deep-rooted nut trees in deep, rich soil, and if we fertilize that soil as any valuable permanent pasture land is fertilized, we can graze that land without injury to ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... me to tell you how well your own homemade compost will fertilize plants. Like home-brewed beer and home-baked bread you can be certain that your compost may be the equal of or superior to almost any commercially made product and certainly will be better fertilizer than the high carbon result of municipal solid waste ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... start, now become helpful to the brave, persistent plant. Every wind that blows brings something to it,—dust, powdered earth, trash, the remains of dead insects; some of this material is carried for miles. All goes to form new soil, or to fertilize or mulch the old. This supplies Kinnikinick's great needs. The plant grows rich from the constant tribute of the winds. The soil-bed grows deeper and richer and is also constantly outbuilding and enlarging, and ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... the diminished supply of water in springs and wells. [Footnote: Babinet condemns the general draining of marshes. "Draining," says he, "has been much in vogue for some years, and it has been a special object to dry and fertilize marshy grounds. I believe that excessive dryness is thus produced, and that other soils in the neighborhood are sterilized in proportion."—Etudes et Lectures, iv., ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... glory of pollen that dripped in tiny yellow flecks to the broad petals below. It was a magnificent flower. There was nothing like it on Beta. That was a marvelous thing about flowers—wherever one went in the universe, plants used the same methods to fertilize their seed and spread their germ plasm. It was too bad that—Kennon jerked his attention to Alexander's face. He detested the thought that his mind was common property. A man should have something he can call his own. There had been ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon terpen, or mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways with the furthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature of its rights. A region, outcast of ocean and earth, wrested at last from both domains their richest treasures. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... half which have elapsed since then have indeed seen extraordinary changes.*[2] The energy which the old borderers threw into their feuds has not become extinct, but survives under more benignant aspects, exhibiting itself in efforts to enlighten, fertilize, and enrich the country which their wasteful ardour before did so much to disturb and impoverish. The heads of the Buccleugh and Elliot family now sit in the British House of Lords. The descendant of Scott of Harden has achieved a world-wide reputation ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... Nature takes thought for them and gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his propensity to carry away and hide things, plants many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares say that he does this on purpose, any more than that the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose? Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their backs that is to protect them from the cold of winter, nor does the fox of his fur. In the tropics sheep cease to grow wool in three or ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... was flower only a few hours ago is now a fluid jelly that trickles at the touch. Tomorrow fresh buds will open, and a continuous succession of bloom may be relied upon for a long season. Since its stigma is widely separated from the anthers and surpasses them, it is probable the flower cannot fertilize itself, but is wholly dependent on the female bees and other insects that come to it for pollen. Note the hairs on the stamens provided as ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan



Words linked to "Fertilize" :   impregnate, dung, stratify, agriculture, change, topdress, husbandry, alter, pollinate, prang up, bang up, enrich, inseminate, nitrify, knock up, fertilization, modify, pollenate, farming, cross-pollinate, cross-fertilise



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