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
Infant botulism is a serious illness that develops when an infant ingests spores of the botulinum bacteria, which then colonize the baby’s underdeveloped gut and begin producing a toxin.
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Brenda Goodman, CNN Money, 29 Dec. 2025
Players can place ocean or forest tiles, use heat resources to raise the temperature and build cities to colonize.
—Nola Taylor Tillman, Space.com, 21 Dec. 2025
Witness historic alignments at Angel Mounds Before Europeans colonized the Americas, Indigenous people built 12 earthen mounds throughout what is now Evansville, Indiana.
—Karl Schneider, IndyStar, 19 Dec. 2025
In the first film, released in 2009, Lang arrived as a military enforcer fighting on behalf of the RDA to colonize the planet of Pandora for mankind.
—Nick Romano, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for colonize
Recent Examples of Synonyms for colonize
Verb
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Today biologists believe that more than 5,000 coyotes inhabit greater Los Angeles.—
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The casting of Hahn will be a bit of a magical treat to fans, who for months had fan-cast her as the bad guy in this project, even when actress Scarlett Johansson was temporarily inhabiting it.—
Verb
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His canvases are populated by allegories.—
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In my view, though, there may not be enough appreciation for Denver’s ability to consistently execute its game plan in tight games, the kind that will populate the playoffs.—
Verb
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Throughout Humphreys County and Hickman County, peopled gathered with their churches for support and comfort in the days after the tragedy.—
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The Master is the greatest of them all, a movie peopled by characters who are at once intensely human and also the stuff of otherworldly fables.—
Cite this Entry
“Colonize.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/colonize. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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