1879 A. Winchell Syllabus Courses Lect. & Instr. Gen. Geol. 114 Nucleating Phase.—Increasing amounts of photospheric matter.—Nuclear condensation apparent.—Sun systems and planetary segregations past the phase of annulation.

1932 Man 32 241/1 The East Riding would encourage the formation of larger estates or the nucleating of two or three farmsteads to form a thorp.

1969 G. F. Bolling in Solidification (Amer. Soc. Metals) (1971) xi. 364 (heading) Inoculating, nucleating and alloying.

1883 American 15 Dec. 152/2 The history of every globe embraces a chaotic, a nebular, a stellar and a planetary stage; that is, its component materials have presented, or will in the course of ages present.., the conditions of irresolvable nebulæ of nucleating and nucleated or resolvable nebulæ, of a white star like Sirius, [etc.].

1942 Proc. Royal Soc. A. 179 401 Preferred directions of growth of these crystallites, relative to the nucleating crystal, were evident on visual inspection.

1961 New Scientist 28 Sept. 813/1 Nucleation is associated with the similarity in spacing between the lattices of the ice crystal and of the nucleating substance.

1974 F. D. Richardson Physical Chem. of Melts in Metall. II. xii. 459 Small unfilled crevices in containers can act as nucleating sites for the evolution of gases from metals at very small supersaturation pressures.

1998 T. L. McCarty & L. J. Watahomigie in B. Pérez Sociocultural Contexts of Lang. & Literacy iv. 78 HUD housing has had a nucleating effect on extended families.