nurture n
1. the properties acquired as a consequence of the way you were treated as a child [syn: raising, rearing]
2. raising someone to be an accepted member of the community; "they debated whether nature or nurture was more important" [syn: breeding, bringing up, fostering, fosterage, raising, rearing, upbringing] v
3. help develop, help grow; "nurture his talents" [syn: foster]
4. bring up; "raise a family"; "bring up children" [syn: rear, raise, bring up, parent]
5. provide with nourishment; "We sustained ourselves on bread and water"; "This kind of food is not nourishing for young children" [syn: nourish, sustain]

Nurture \Nur"ture\, n. [OE. norture, noriture, OF. norriture, norreture, F. nourriture, fr. L. nutritura a nursing, suckling. See Nourish.]
1. The act of nourishing or nursing; thender care; education; training. A man neither by nature nor by nurture wise. --Milton.
2. That which nourishes; food; diet. --Spenser.

Nurture \Nur"ture\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Nurtured; p. pr. & vb. n. Nurturing.]
1. To feed; to nourish.
2. To educate; to bring or train up. He was nurtured where he had been born. --Sir H. Wotton. Syn: To nourish; nurse; cherish; bring up; educate; tend. Usage: To Nurture, Nourish, Cherish. Nourish denotes to supply with food, or cause to grow; as, to nourish a

The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities ("nature," i.e. nativism, or innatism) versus personal experiences ("nurture," i.e. empiricism or behaviorism) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

"Nature versus nurture" in its modern sense was coined for its binary simplification of two tightly interwoven parameters, as for example an environment of wealth, education and social privilege are often historically passed to genetic offspring.

The view that humans acquire all or almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" is known as tabula rasa ("blank slate"). This question was once considered to be an appropriate division of developmental influences, but since both types of factors are known to play such interacting roles in development, many modern psychologists consider the question naive—representing an outdated state of knowledge. That is, the idea that either nature or nurture explains a creature's behavior is a sort of single cause fallacy.

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