noun

• 1The process of taming an animal and keeping it as a pet or on a farm.

  ‘domestication of animals lies at the heart of human civilization’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Through domestication, humans turned dogs into tools to help them dominate nature.’
  • ‘In addition to exponentially increasing certain animal populations, the process of domestication has changed the very nature of its subjects.’
  • ‘The horse also survived, but only through its domestication and preservation overseas.’
  • ‘Since the domestication of dogs and the beginning of agriculture, humans have shaped the evolution of many forms of life.’
  • ‘But this perspective is not universally shared; other thinkers argue that domestication has effectively bred the wildness out of animals.’
  • ‘For example, the domestication of cattle did not begin as a simple prospect of milk and meat.’
  • ‘Domestication did not violate nature, disrupt evolution, or enslave animals, but was itself evolutionary.’
  • ‘The Asian elephant is losing ground every day - to habitat loss, timber projects, capture for domestication, clashes with humans, and disease.’
  • ‘Just as people once domesticated cattle, sheep, and chickens, so, it is claimed, it is the turn of prawns and reef fish to enter an era of rapid domestication.’
  • ‘Perhaps respect requires leaving animals alone in the wild and not producing animals for domestication.’

  1. 1.1The cultivation of a plant for food.
     ‘this book covers the evolution and domestication of six important cereal crops’
     More example sentences

     • ‘The plant has a fascinating history of origin and domestication, and has been intimately involved in human history.’
     • ‘One of the earliest methods used to increase yield and hardiness was the domestication of plants.’
     • ‘The subjects covered include the origin of the cotton plant and its domestication, the history of the world cotton industry, and a history of cultivar development in the U.S.’
     • ‘He reverses the usual humancentric perspective, asking what domestication has meant to the apple tree, the potato, and the tulip.’
     • ‘Coffee spread widely throughout the Arab world in the first century after its domestication.’
     • ‘Native Americans certainly altered the landscape with the use of fire, land cultivation, plant domestication, and hunting.’
     • ‘Because researchers have focused their analyses on plant domestication and cultivation, questions related to wood use have received less attention.’
     • ‘In the Ohio Valley, a general pattern has been documented of intensification of the gathering of plant species leading to their management and eventual domestication in the context of gardens.’
     • ‘Early Woodland domestication specifically has been identified at sites within or near the Mid-Ohio Valley.’
     • ‘Domestication led to the emergence, as early as the 6th millennium bc, of cultivated barley with firmly attached grains.’
  2. 1.2humorous The process of making someone fond of and good at home life and the tasks that it involves.
     ‘I won't say it was an easy change, but my domestication was a much needed one’
     More example sentences

     • ‘The crisis provoked by her burning the meat heightens her resentful awareness of loss of individuality to which the domestication of marriage has subjected her.’
     • ‘Despite her understanding of the pitfalls of domestication, however, she never gives up her claims to freedom or to a home for her family.’
     • ‘She picks out the Luddite unrest to make it seem that the danger of working-class crowds actually engendered the need for middle-class female domestication.’
     • ‘True to the formula, Bond so overwhelms her that she trades in her independent if empty existence and accepts domestication.’
     • ‘He argues that the movie marks the beginning of Hepburn's domestication, with her own consent and even collaboration.’
     • ‘First off, the man's cured himself of his unfortunate bout with domestication, and the rest of this album grooves, grooves, grooves.’
     • ‘The Grammys are the first step in the singer's domestication, of his certain transmogrification from hate-filled bad boy to lovable, safe, pop dreamboat.’
     • ‘What are we to make of a woman who sells female domestication in a honey-hued voice but behind the cameras acts like a tough-as-nails male CEO?’
     • ‘Armstrong's analysis indicates the particular deployment of a new ideology of (English) bourgeois morality centring on the strict domestication of women.’
     • ‘Ana's world is pitted against the dull monochrome of conventionality - marriage, domestication - and becomes the source of energy both for Ana as character and the central leitmotif of the story.’