American English

Definition of populate verb from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary



    Verb Forms present simple I / you / we / they populate
    he / she / it populates
    past simple populated
    -ing form populating
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  1. 1[often passive] populate something to live in an area and form its population synonym inhabit a heavily/densely/sparsely/thinly populated country The island is populated largely by sheep. (figurative) the amazing characters that populate her novels
  2. 2populate something to move people or animals to an area to live there The French began to populate the island in the 15th century.
  3. 3populate something (computing) to add data to a document
See the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary entry: populate