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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

populate.

To supply with inhabitants; to people.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈpɒp.jʊˌleɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɑ.pjəˌleɪt/Canada, General-American/ˈpɔp.jəˌlæɪt/Australia
  1. To supply with inhabitants; to people.

    transitive
  2. To live in; to inhabit.

    transitive
  3. To increase in number; to breed.

    intransitive
  4. To fill initially empty items in a collection.

    ambitransitive
    Clicking the refresh button will populate the grid.
  5. To fill initially empty slots or sockets on a circuit board or similar.

Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Medieval Latin populātus, past participle of populor (“populate”), from Latin populus (“people”).

adj/ˈpɒp.jʊˌleɪt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɑ.pjəˌleɪt/Canada, General-American/ˈpɔp.jəˌlæɪt/Australia
  1. populous

    obsolete
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Medieval Latin populātus, past participle of populor (“populate”), from Latin populus (“people”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.