colonize
pronunciation
How to pronounce colonize in British English:
UK [ˈkɒlənaɪz]
How to pronounce colonize in American English:
US [ˈkɑːlənaɪz]
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- Verb:
- settle as a colony; of countries in the developing world
- settle as colonists or establish a colony (in)
Word Origin
- colonize (v.)
- 1620s, "to settle with colonists," from stem of Latin colonus "tiller of the soil, farmer" (see colony); in sense "to make another place into a national dependency" without regard for settlement there by 1790s (such as in reference to French activity in Egypt or British work in India), and probably directly from colony. No principle ought ever to be tolerated or acted upon, that does not proceed on the basis of India being considered as the temporary residence of a great British Establishment, for the good government of the country, upon steady and uniform principles, and of a large British factory, for the beneficial management of its trade, upon rules applicable to the state and manners of the country. [Henry Dundas, Chairman of the East-India Company, letter, April 2, 1800] Related: Colonized; colonizing.
Example
- 1. Equally implausible is the notion that an extraterrestrial race would want to colonize earth .
- 2. You might be asking : why on god 's green earth would beijing want to colonize the moon ?
- 3. They want to know whether the crabs will invade and leave , or permanently colonize the shallow areas .
- 4. You have all these ideas but they 'll colonize mars before you have a chance to implement half of them .
- 5. They figured our galaxy holds about 100 billion stars and that an intelligent exponentially-reproducing species could colonize the galaxy in just a few million years .