One way to picture it: a person working the same piece of ground season after season — turning the soil, watering, pulling weeds — so that something can slowly grow there. The growth is not instant and it is not free; it comes from repeated care over time.
From the word’s history
From Medieval Latin cultivātus, past participle of cultivō "to till, cultivate", from cultīvus "tilled", ultimately from Latin colō "to till, tend, care for, inhabit". The Latin colō already carried both "work the land" and "tend/care for", which is why the English word moves so easily from soil to skills and people.
字源可以幫忙看懂為什麼這個字能同時用在土地和人身上：cultivate 來自拉丁文 colō，而 colō 本身就同時有「耕種土地」和「照料、看顧」兩層意思（culture、colony 也是同一家）。所以英文裡從「耕地」走到「培養能力」「結交某人」並不是後來才硬接上去的比喻，那份「持續照料」的意思從一開始就在字裡面。
Wiktionary, "cultivate" (Medieval Latin cultivō < cultīvus < Latin colō); consistent with Online Etymology Dictionary
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
cultivateverb/ˈkʌltɪveɪt/
- 1
To grow plants, notably crops.
- Most farmers in this region cultivate maize.
- So unhealthy is this valley, which is the home of large game, that whole kraals full of people who have tried to cultivate the rich land, have died in it of fever, or fled away leaving their crops unreaped.
- 2
To nurture; to foster; to tend.
- They tried to cultivate an interest in learning among their students.
- Left also to himself by guardians[…] he cultivated more his imagination than his judgment
- 3
To turn or stir soil in preparation for planting or as a method of weed control between growing crop plants.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。