Definition of "domesticate" [do•mes•ti•cate]

• To cause to feel comfortable at home; make domestic. (verb-transitive)
• To adopt or make fit for domestic use or life. (verb-transitive)
• To train or adapt (an animal or plant) to live in a human environment and be of use to humans. (verb-transitive)
• To introduce and accustom (an animal or plant) into another region; naturalize. (verb-transitive)
• To bring down to the level of the ordinary person. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Despite its flaws, the rabbit is comparatively easy to domesticate, which is one reason people have been particularly eager over the past year, the Year of the Tiger, to buy bunnies."
• "Jane Simonsen, in her study of attempts to "domesticate" Native American women, writes that "implicit in this condemnation of gossip and transience is the suggestion that isolating women in their homes would keep them from speaking out in tribal councils, preserving rituals and stories, and maintaining kinship ties.""
• "Debates about translation have been raging since the Romans, and, crudely, they all come down to the same decision: whether to "domesticate" the translation or to "foreignise" it."