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Domestication   /dəmˌɛstəkˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Domestication

noun
1.
Adaptation to intimate association with human beings.
2.
The attribute of having been domesticated.  Synonym: tameness.
3.
Accommodation to domestic life.






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"Domestication" Quotes from Famous Books



... removed from such classical tradition as was preserved in the Mediterranean countries. In the second place, the recovery of classical criticism in the Italian renaissance antedated by a hundred years the domestication of classical theory in England. Not until the seventeenth century, as has been shown, did rhetoric in England come again to mean what it had in classical antiquity. Subsequent chapters will show that classical theories of poetry, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... to its keeper, and the command which some of these men acquire over the objects of their care by appealing to their affections is very extraordinary. The mere sound of the keeper's voice has been known to reclaim an animal which escaped from domestication and resumed its ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... these cases illustrates the variations of animals under domestication, the particular specimens selected being chiefly the familiar pigeon, in its various forms, and the jungle-fowl with ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... commencing about 1850 have been prolific of momentous changes. It is the era of the sewing machine, of the domestication of steam and electricity, the overthrow of the great rebellion, the destruction of slavery, the consolidation of the German empire, the fall of the second Napoleon, the birth of the French republic, the incorporation of India ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... to my knowledge, has ever seen the bees house-hunting in the woods. Yet there can be no doubt that they look up new quarters either before or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees are wild bees and incapable of domestication; that is, the instinct to go back to nature and take up again their wild abodes in the trees is never eradicated. Years upon years of life in the apiary seems to have no appreciable effect towards their final, permanent domestication. That every new swarm contemplates migrating to the woods, ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... England it appeared to me that by following the example of Lyell in geology, and by collecting all facts which bore in any way on the variation of animals and plants under domestication and nature, some light might perhaps be thrown on the whole subject. My first note-book was opened in July, 1837. I worked on true Baconian principles, and without any theory collected facts on a wholesale scale, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... one look at him sitting there, as unresponsive to the spell as the cup from which he was sipping its third replenishment of tea, would have explained his domestication in that household;—the necessity, in fact, for domesticating among them some one who was always buoyantly upon the surface, whose talk, in comfortably rounded sentences, flowed along with a mild approximation to wit, whose sentiments ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... sluggish, though serviceable enough for the heavy work. Imagination, full of fire as it is, must always set the pace. So the soul of the Late Palaeolithic hunter, having already in imagination controlled the useful portion of the animal world, was more than half-way on the road to its domestication. But in so far as he mistook the will for the accomplished deed, he was not getting the value out of his second horse; or, to drop metaphor, the scientific reason as yet lay dormant in his soul. But his dream ...
— Progress and History • Various

... become attached to the pursuit of gardening since his domestication. He put on his hat; went out; and set to work on the plot near the gate. The sun was shining brightly; and when he had taken a few turns with the machine he stopped, raising his face to the breeze, and saw Conolly standing so close to him that he started ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... Toby's domestication was his exclusive loyalty to a single person. He had but one intimate friend, and to him his loyalty was intense. He would tolerate the presence of other members of the household, but when strangers appeared he was decidedly offish, ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... necessary for the manufacture of those weapons, and the making of them, together with the performance of sundry odd jobs in the garden, kept me busy for nearly a month, during which I was afforded ample opportunity to note the progress which Billy was making in the domestication of his cat. The beast was growing fast, and it was also developing certain markings which tended to confirm my original suspicion that it was some species of leopard, or panther, a circumstance that not only occasioned me considerable uneasiness but also ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... preserved for the sake of slaughter, truly, but if not preserved for that reason, not one of them would be alive at all. Their will to live and our will to kill them thus harmoniously combine in this peculiar higher synthesis of domestication. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... proposition that Lloyd should live with Coleridge and become in a way his pupil was agreed to by his parents, and in September he accompanied the philosopher to Nether Stowey a day or so after David Hartley's birth, all eager to begin domestication and tutelage. Lloyd was a sensitive, delicate youth, with an acute power of analysis and considerable grasp of metaphysical ideas. No connection ever began more amiably. He was, I might add, by only two days ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... be said at this point that in America married life often proceeds too far in the domestication of the man, in his complete separation from male companionship, in a never-broken companionship between man and wife. This is distinctly unhealthy for the man, for he requires in his recreation the sense of freedom from restraint that he can have only in masculine company; where the difficult ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... Magpie, the Jay has considerable talent for mimicry, and in a state of domestication may be taught to articulate words like a Parrot. At certain times I have heard this bird utter a few notes resembling the tinkle of a bell, and which, if syllabled, might form such a word as dilly-lily; but it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... a knowledge of pottery to the domestication of animals in the eastern hemisphere, and in the western to the cultivation of ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... inferior sense of it. None the less however, his threat did touch them; for if they had escaped it was only to meet a new danger. Mr. Moreen appealed to him, on every precedent, as a man of the world; but his wife had recourse, for the first time since his domestication with them, to a fine hauteur, reminding him that a devoted mother, with her child, had arts that protected her against ...
— The Pupil • Henry James

... conditions with it. Morphological species, that is, forms which differ to an amount that would justify their being considered good species, have been produced in plenty through selection by man out of variations arising under domestication or cultivation. The facts just given are therefore of some scientific importance, for they tend to show that a physiological species can be and is produced in nature out of the varieties of a pre-existing closely allied ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... extent animals reason, or show any glimmering of what we call reason, is a much-debated question among animal psychologists, and I shall have more to say upon the subject later on. Dogs undoubtedly show gleams of reason, and other animals in domestication, such as the elephant and the monkey. One does not often feel like questioning Darwin's conclusions, yet the incident of the caged bear which he quotes, that pawed the water in front of its cage to create a current that should float within its reach a piece of bread ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... to satisfy hunger and protect from cold. The methods of procuring food in primitive times. The variety of food was constantly increased. The food-supply was increased by inventions. The discovery and use of fire. Cooking added to the economy of the food-supply. The domestication of animals. The beginnings of agriculture were very meagre. The manufacture of clothing. Primitive shelters and houses. Discovery and use of metals. Transportation as a means of economic development. Trade, or exchange ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... that had grown up in a wild condition were, and remained, perfect devils; but the captured cows could be so thoroughly domesticated that they would eat out of their attendants' hands, and the buffaloes bred in a state of domestication exhibited exactly the same character as the ordinary domestic cattle. The bulls, especially when old, continued to be somewhat unreliable; but the cows and oxen, on the other hand, were as gentle and docile as any ruminant could be. They ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... confinement in the neighbourhood of Aix, the child left to the care of the nurse, the journey to Munich to find the false Louise Duval was no more. The documents obtained through the agency of her easy-tempered kinsman, the late Marquis de Rochebriant, and her subsequent domestication in the house of the von Rudesheims,—all this it is needless to do more here than briefly recapitulate. The letter then went on: "While thus kindly treated by the family with whom nominally a governess, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... be of the same species. Now they are acknowledged to be, not only distinct, but very different in many respects. The Asiatic, or, as it is more frequently called, the "Indian" elephant is the larger of the two; but it is possible that domestication may have produced a larger kind, as is the rule with many animals. The African species exists only in a wild state; and it would appear that individuals of this kind have been measured having the dimensions of the largest of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... Since her domestication under his own roof, the old gentleman's liking for her had grown tenfold strong; he had familiarized himself with the idea of counting her one of his own flock. But, the child of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... their lives in the business. The animals found on the island seem to be quite a distinctive breed from any other known race, and are noted for their intelligence, as well as for their docility, after proper domestication. They are not so large as those of Africa, but seem to be more highly prized in India. The exportation, as we learned, still goes on in behalf of the English government, sixteen hundred animals having thus been disposed of ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... parroquets, the fine crest of the cockatoos, the swift flight of many of the smaller species, and the graceful motions of the little love-birds and allied forms, together with their affectionate natures, aptitude for domestication, and power of mimicry, combine to render them at once the most conspicuous and the most attractive of all the specially tropical ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... facts which tell so immensely in favour of natural selection as an important cause of organic evolution, are those of domestication. The art of the horticulturist, the fancier, the cattle-breeder, &c., consists in producing greater and greater deviations from a given wild type of plant or animal, in any particular direction that may be desired for purposes either ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... facts, akin to the above, and which deserve not less attention. The pig, in its domestic state, is subject to the attacks of a hydatid, from which the wild animal is free; hence the disease called measles in pork. The domestication of the pig is of course an event subsequent to the origin of man; indeed, comparatively speaking, a recent event. Whence, then, the first progenitor of this hydatid? So also there is a tinea which attacks ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... went to work with commendable energy, and planned with remarkable forethought. They built themselves cabins, and each family cultivated for itself a small patch of ground. The colored people are fond of domestic life, and with them domestication means happy children, a fat pig, a dozen or more chickens, and a garden. Whoever visits the Freedmen's Village now in the vicinity of Washington will discover all of these evidences of prosperity and happiness. The schools are objects of much interest. Good teachers, white ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... steel for the authorized ships. It would seem desirable that the wants of the Army and the Navy in this regard should be reasonably met, and that by uniting their contracts such inducement might be offered as would result in securing the domestication ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... the Domestication of Animals (Journal of Ethnological Society); 1871: Gregariousness in Cattle and in Men (Macmillan's Magazine); 1872: Statistical Inquiries into the Efficacy of Prayer (Fortnightly Review); 1873: Relative Supplies from Town and Country Families to the Population of Future Generations (Journal ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... preoccupied with wild beasts, and when the alliances and friendships, which he would value in life, might be found in that sphere. There is much plausibility in the view put forward by M. Salomon Reinach, that the domestication of animals itself implies a totemistic habit of thought, and the consequent protection of these animals by means of taboos from harm and death. It may well be that, after all, the usefulness of domestic animals from a material point of view was only a secondary consideration for man, and ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl

... therefore, is not entirely a choice, but partly a necessity, growing out of their dependence upon the reindeer. They must wander or their deer will starve, and then their own starvation follows as a natural consequence. Their unsettled mode of life probably grew, in the first place, out of the domestication of the reindeer, and the necessity which it involved of consulting first the reindeer's wants; but the restless, vagabondish habits thus produced have now become a part of the Korak's very nature, so that he could hardly live in any other way, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... horizon: cut those trees, and he bleeds; mar those hills, and he suffers. How has the farmer planted himself in his fields; builded himself into his stone walls, and evoked the sympathy of the hills by his struggle! This home feeling, this domestication of nature, is important to the observer. This is the bird-lime with which he catches the bird; this is the private door that admits him behind the scenes. This is one source of Gilbert White's charm, and of the charm ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... was the call for the lost pack of the ancient millenniums. Under the prodding hypnosis of this music he could not but yearn and burn for the vague, forgotten life of the pack when the world was young and the pack was the pack ere it was lost for ever through the endless centuries of domestication. ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... a sentence which seems to involve a self-contradiction. "I mean by nature only the aggregate action and product of many natural laws, and by law only the ascertained sequence of events." [Footnote: Plants and Animals under Domestication, vol. i. p. 6.] Law, in this sense, then, is simply the statement of observed facts, and as such can have no action at all. It asserts that certain phenomena do uniformly follow each other in an ascertained order; but it gives us no information ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... training of Gypsies to salutary discipline and subordination; and the associations it provided for them out of school hours, being under the superintendence of a regular family, would, in an especial manner, be favorable to their domestication. ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland

... possess "carrying" power. It undoubtedly gave him his original popularity, and we need not despise it now, inasmuch as it makes less tedious the task of ascertaining and justifying his true place in the further "domestication"—if only in domesticities too often mean and grimy—of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... even wider variety of tendencies to act than animals, these are much more plastic and modifiable, more susceptible of training, and much more in need of it than those of the sub-human forms. Even among animals under conditions of domestication, instinct tends largely to be replaced by habitual or acquired modes of behavior. The human being, born with a nervous system and a brain in extremely unformed and plastic condition, is so susceptible to every influence current in his environment that most of his actions within ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... of persons at their tameness, 25. Bees intended for the comfort of man. Properties fitting them for domestication. Bees never attack when filled with honey, 26. Swarming bees fill their honey bags and are peaceable. Hiving of bees safe, 27. Bees cannot resist the temptation to fill themselves with sweets. Manageable by means of sugared water, ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... English poetic style at the close of the last century came from an unexpected quarter. What scholars and professional men of letters had sought to do by their imitations of Spenser and Milton, and their domestication of the Gothic and the Celtic muse, was much more effectually done by Percy and the ballad collectors. What they had sought to do was to recall British poetry to the walks of imagination and to older and better models ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... so to speak, got into the animal's. On the other hand, when we study rabbits and guinea-pigs, we are apt to be too stingy, for these rodents are under the average of mammals, and those that live in domestication illustrate the stupefying effect of a too sheltered life. The same applies to domesticated sheep contrasted with wild sheep, or even with their own lambs. If we are to form a sound judgment on the intelligence of mammals we must not attend too much to those that have profited ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... The difficulties of domestication at St. Johnswort had not been misrepresented by the late proprietor, Hewson found, when he went to take possession of his estate. He thought it right in engaging servants to say openly that the place had the reputation of being haunted, and if he had not thought ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... to which the Horse, from his state of domestication, is frequently subject. The Farriers have termed it the Grease. It is an inflammation and swelling in the heel, from which issues matter possessing properties of a very peculiar kind, which seems capable of ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner



Words linked to "Domestication" :   accommodation, flexibility, wildness, adaption, adaptation, tractability, tractableness, tamed, adjustment, tame, fitting



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