Yet every mother breeds not sons alike. --Shak.
If the sun breed maggots in a dead dog. --Shak.
2. To take care of in infancy, and through the age of youth;
to bring up; to nurse and foster.
To bring thee forth with pain, with care to breed.
--Dryden.
Born and bred on the verge of the wilderness.
--Everett.
3. To educate; to instruct; to form by education; to train;
-- sometimes followed by up.
But no care was taken to breed him a Protestant.
--Bp. Burnet.
His farm may not remove his children too far from
him, or the trade he breeds them up in. --Locke.
4. To engender; to cause; to occasion; to originate; to
produce; as, to breed a storm; to breed disease.
Lest the place And my quaint habits breed
astonishment. --Milton.
5. To give birth to; to be the native place of; as, a pond
breeds fish; a northern country breeds stout men.
6. To raise, as any kind of stock.
7. To produce or obtain by any natural process. [Obs.]
Children would breed their teeth with less danger.
--Locke.
Syn: To engender; generate; beget; produce; hatch; originate;
bring up; nourish; train; instruct.
2. The raising or improving of any kind of domestic animals;
as, farmers should pay attention to breeding.
3. Nurture; education; formation of manners.
She had her breeding at my father's charge. --Shak.
4. Deportment or behavior in the external offices and
decorums of social life; manners; knowledge of, or
training in, the ceremonies, or polite observances of
society.
Delicacy of breeding, or that polite deference and
respect which civility obliges us either to express
or counterfeit towards the persons with whom we
converse. --Hume.
5. Descent; pedigree; extraction. [Obs.]
Honest gentlemen, I know not your breeding. --Shak.
{Close breeding}, {In and in breeding}, breeding from a male
and female from the same parentage.
{Cross breeding}, breeding from a male and female of
different lineage.
{Good breeding}, politeness; genteel deportment.
Syn: Education; instruction; nurture; training; manners. See
{Education}.