as in to inhabit
to supply with inhabitants
believes that someday humans will be sent to colonize Mars
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Recent Examples of colonize
Yet before the eighteenth century, Europeans—including the English people who colonized North America—did not conceptualize hair as an integral body part.
—
Literary Hub, 9 June 2025
All of this got turned on its head beginning in the 1970s, as the art world became sensitized to the deep inequities between men and women, white and nonwhite, colonizer and colonized.
—Susan Tallman, The Atlantic, 30 May 2025
This all spells bad news as the climate shifts open up new areas for Aspergillus to colonize.
—Laura Paddison, CNN Money, 24 May 2025
According to Markus Egert, a microbiologist at Furtwangen University, in Schwarzwald, Germany, used kitchen sponges are colonized by a large diversity of microbes, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
—Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 7 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for colonize
Literary Hub, 9 June 2025
All of this got turned on its head beginning in the 1970s, as the art world became sensitized to the deep inequities between men and women, white and nonwhite, colonizer and colonized.
—Susan Tallman, The Atlantic, 30 May 2025
This all spells bad news as the climate shifts open up new areas for Aspergillus to colonize.
—Laura Paddison, CNN Money, 24 May 2025
According to Markus Egert, a microbiologist at Furtwangen University, in Schwarzwald, Germany, used kitchen sponges are colonized by a large diversity of microbes, including bacteria, fungi, and viruses.
—Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 7 May 2025
See All Example Sentences for colonize
Recent Examples of Synonyms for colonize
Verb
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Lima, home to 10 million people, has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years.—
Andrea Margolis,
FOXNews.com,
28 June 2025
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The area is still inhabited by the Wampanoag tribe and that is the setting for the scene where Hooper, Brody and Mayor Vaughn have a showdown about warning people about the menacing great white shark.—
Rosemary Feitelberg,
Footwear News,
27 June 2025
Verb
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As ever, the surrounding economic ecosystem for kids trying to make NIL deals will be populated by men like Blazer once was, feasting like hyenas and alligators on the migration of a vast herd of wildebeests.—
Guy Lawson,
Rolling Stone,
22 June 2025
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If your web browser automatically populates your username and password for you, make sure this information is free of typos.—
Kurt Knutsson,
FOXNews.com,
22 June 2025
Verb
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Sure, your team is still peopled with the same flawed human beings, still maddeningly inconsistent and impossible to predict.—
Vinson Cunningham,
New Yorker,
2 June 2025
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Louis is the kind of polarizing character who people either really loved or loved to hate.—
Max Gao,
HollywoodReporter,
3 Sep. 2019
Cite this Entry
“Colonize.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/colonize. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
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