foster

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To bring up; nurture: bear and foster offspring. See Synonyms at nurture.
2. v. To promote the growth and development of; cultivate: detect and foster artistic talent. See Synonyms at advance.
3. v. To nurse; cherish: foster a secret hope.
4. adj. Providing parental care and nurture to children not related through legal or blood ties: foster parents; foster grandparents; a foster home.
5. adj. Receiving parental care and nurture from those not related to one through legal or blood ties: foster children.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To feed; nourish; support; bring up.
2. To sustain by aid, care, or encouragement; give support to; cherish; promote: as, to foster the growth of tender plants; to foster an enterprise; to foster pride or genius.
3. Synonyms Harbor, etc. (see cherish); to indulge, favor, forward, advance, further, help on.
4. To be nourished or trained up together.
5. n. A contracted form of forster, forester.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Providing parental care to unrelated children.
2. adj. receiving such care
3. adj. Related by such care
4. n. countable, obsolete A forester
5. n. uncountable The care given to another; guardianship
6. v. transitive To nurture or bring up offspring; or to provide similar parental care to an unrelated child.
7. v. transitive To cultivate and grow something.
8. v. transitive To nurse or cherish something.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To feed; to nourish; to support; to bring up.
2. v. To cherish; to promote the growth of; to encourage; to sustain and promote.
3. v. obsolete To be nourished or trained up together.
4. adj. Relating to nourishment; affording, receiving, or sharing nourishment or nurture; -- applied to father, mother, child, brother, etc., to indicate that the person so called stands in the relation of parent, child, brother, etc., as regards sustenance and nurture, but not by tie of blood.
5. n. obsolete A forester.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. promote the growth of
2. v. bring up under fosterage; of children
3. n. United States songwriter whose songs embody the sentiment of the South before the American Civil War (1826-1864)
4. v. help develop, help grow
5. adj. providing or receiving nurture or parental care though not related by blood or legal ties