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Wiktionary
civilise

vb. 1 To educate or enlighten a person or people to a perceived higher standard of (l en behaviour). 2 To introduce or impose the (l en standards) of one (l en civilisation) upon another (l en civilization), group or person, arguably with the intent of achieving a perceived higher standard of (l en behavior). 3 To bring from a state of (l en savagery) to an educated or refined state.

WordNet
civilise
  1. v. train to be discriminative in taste or judgment; "Cultivate your musical taste"; "Train your tastebuds"; "She is well schooled in poetry" [syn: educate, school, train, cultivate, civilize]

  2. raise from a barbaric to a civilized state; "The wild child found wandering in the forest was gradually civilized" [syn: civilize]

Usage examples of "civilise".

I recognised a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali law student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to become civilised.

They were strong men, but I was mad with rage, and that awful lust for slaughter which will creep into the hearts of the most civilised of us when blows are flying, and life and death tremble on the turn.

Sir, I lately took my friend Boswell and shewed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town.

Many men, passing along that same road, held that same conviction--and the conviction further that as this their Town was the finest, grandest, most beautiful, and most civilised Town in the world, that world also was theirs.

The entire history of the Mercatoria was the record of its implacable persecution and destruction of AIs and the continual, laborious, zealously pursued effort to prevent them ever again coming into existence within the civilised galaxy.

More importantly, so, potentially, does the fate of the Mercatoria and the civilised galaxy.

Cats are the runes of beauty, invincibility, wonder, pride, freedom, coldness, self-sufficiency, and dainty individuality -- the qualities of sensitive, enlightened, mentally developed, pagan, cynical, poetic, philosophic, dispassionate, reserved, independent, Nietzschean, unbroken, civilised, master-class men.

Manuhuru, like the average civilised mother, had certain views for her daughter, and ever since the Bounty had sailed had sought to induce the girl to forget her white lover and accept for her husband Pipiri the Areoi priest.

But now that the prestige of the British Empire may be considered to be assured by the capture of one of our forces, and that we are thereby forced to evacuate other positions which we had occupied, that difficulty is over and we can no longer hesitate to inform your Government and people in the sight of the whole civilised world why we are fighting and on what conditions we are ready to restore peace.

Something very like the war fever that occasionally runs through a civilised community had got into my blood, and in my heart I was not so very sorry that I had to return to Maybury that night.

Weather Channel went on chattering in civilised tones about the downward march of millibars, those useful measurements of lowering air pressure and forthcoming disaster.

I thought, as the Envoy chosen by your people to participate in the peace negotiations which civilised worlds use to settle their differences, that you would at least be prepared to listen to me.

England, you must remember, is a civilised country, and taboos are institutions that belong to the lowest and most degraded savages.

All taboos are the same in origin and spirit, whether savage or civilised, eastern or western.

So shall you civilise Africa, and establish stocking factories in Abyssinia and Bambo.