inoculate

verb

1. (transitive)To introduce an antigenic substance or vaccine into something (e.g. the body) or someone, such as to produce immunity to a specific disease.

   “But you would not willingly thus give up the Cause; therefore endeavour to draw others into your Assistance, and venture to assert, that by the Account Dr. Nettleton gives, as also by the best Observation upon those who have been Inoculated in this City, scarcely a fourth part of them have had a true and genuine Small Pox.”

   “The sense that it takes outrageous fortune to get inoculated echoes here in the Bay Area, where pharmacies have canceled flu-shot clinics, doctors turn away pleading patients and health officials are reduced to telling panicked callers that they should practice good personal hygiene.”

2. (broadly, transitive)To safeguard or protect something as if by inoculation.
3. (transitive)To add one substance to another.

   “The culture medium was inoculated with selenium to investigate the rate of uptake.”

4. (transitive)To graft by inserting buds.

   “to inoculate the bud of one tree or plant into another”

   “to inoculate a tree”

   “And in Aprill figtreen inoculate”

5. (figuratively, transitive)To introduce into the mind (used especially of harmful ideas or principles).

   “to inoculate someone with treason or infidelity”

   “You ſhould not haue beleeu'd me, for vertue cannot ſo e[n]oculat our old ſtock, but vve ſhall reliſh of it, I loued you not.”

   “The Church tries to inoculate humanity with the imaginary goodness drawn down from a fabulous heaven, and from a priest-manufactured God.”

noun

1. Synonym of inoculum.