- 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
Want to learn more?
Find out which words work together and produce more natural sounding English with the Oxford Collocations Dictionary app.
- 2populate something to move people or animals to an area to live there The French began to populate the island in the 15th century.
- 3populate something (computing) to add data to a document
populate
verbNAmE//ˈpɑpyəˌleɪt//
Verb Forms present simple I / you / we / they populate he / she / it populates
past simple populated
-ing form populating
Check pronunciation: populate