melioration
(miːlɪəˈreɪʃən)
[n. of action f. late L. meliōrāre to meliorate.]
1. The action of making better, or the condition of being made better; amelioration, improvement.
| 1626 Bacon Sylva §855 You must ever resort to the beginning of things for Melioration. a 1682 Sir T. Browne Tracts (1684) 47 A notable way for melioration of the Plant. 1772 Priestley in Phil. Trans. LXII. 184, I could not ..effect any melioration of the noxious quality of this kind of air. 1796 Burney Mem. Metastasio II. 280 Persevere in your melioration, till you are perfectly cured. 1827 H. Steuart Planter's G. (1828) 205 All soils are susceptible of melioration. 1876 Bancroft Hist. U.S. III. i. 7 The generations of men are not like the leaves on the trees, which fall and renew themselves without melioration or change. |
2. An instance of meliorating; a change for the better; a thing or an action by which something is made better; an improvement.
| 1647 Lilly Chr. Astrol. xxviii. 183, I concluded, that about two yeers after..he should sensibly perceive a melioration in Estate by meanes of a Wife. 1661 Boyle Cert. Phys. Ess. (1669) 120 By an Insight into Chymistry one may be enabl'd to make some Meliorations (I speak not of Transmutations) of Mineral and Metalline Bodies. 1796 Morse Amer. Geog. II. 568 Transplanting, engrafting, and other meliorations [in horticulture]. 1878 Emerson Sovereignty of Ethics in North Amer. Rev. CXXVI. 406 The civil history of man might be traced by the successive meliorations as marked in higher moral generalizations. |
b. Scots Law. In pl., applied spec. to improvements effected by a tenant upon the land rented by him.
| 1838 W. Bell Dict. Law Scot. 644 A clause binding the landlord to make the necessary meliorations. 1845 R. Hunter Landlord & Tenant (ed. 2) II. 232 A proprietor stipulated in the lease to make certain meliorations, and to pay to the lessee the expense of meliorations made by him. |