Other forms: cultivated, cultivating, cultivates
To cultivate is to grow crops with care, or to develop a skill or friendship. Cultivate the land, cultivate a habit, cultivate contacts.
The agricultural sense is the literal one: preparing and working soil to grow things. The figurative one is much commoner and carries a faint suggestion of deliberateness — cultivating a friendship implies it was worked at, which is not always a compliment. Note cultivated, meaning both worked and refined; cultivation; and that culture comes from the same Latin word for tilling.
1verbcultivateTo grow crops with care.
“The monks cultivated vegetables and herbs in the walled garden.”
2verbdevelopTo develop a skill or a friendship deliberately.
“She cultivated a friendship with the head chef and learned his best recipes.”
cultivate is a tending or developing.
Medieval Latin cultivare comes from Latin colere, to till or tend. Culture, colony and cult come from the same tending.
Proto-Indo-European
*kʷel- — to move; to turn (around)
Latin
cultus
Medieval Latin
cultivātus
English, today
cultivate
Built from
From Medieval Latin cultivātus, perfect passive participle of cultivō (“till, cultivate”) (see -ate for more), from cultīvus (“tilled”), from Latin cultus, perfect passive participle of colō (“till, cultivate”), which comes from earlier quelō, from Proto-Indo-European kʷel- (“to move; to turn (around)”). Cognates include Ancient Greek πέλω and Sanskrit चरति. The same Proto-Indo-European root also gave Latin inquilinus (“inhabitant”) and anculus (“servant”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA