proliferate

English

Etymology

Back-formation from proliferation.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɹəˈlɪf.əɹ.eɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Verb

proliferate (third-person singular simple present proliferates, present participle proliferating, simple past and past participle proliferated)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To increase in number or spread rapidly; to multiply.

   The flowers proliferated rapidly all spring.

   • 1976 March 27, F. Dudley Hart, “History of the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis”, in British Medical Journal, volume 1, number 6012, →DOI, →JSTOR, page 763:

     When no certain cure exists, quack remedies tend to proliferate and the history of quackery and secret cures is full of extraordinary forms of treatment for the various arthritic disorders.

   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion‎^[1]:

     But through the oligopoly, charcoal fuel proliferated throughout London's trades and industries.  By the 1200s, brewers and bakers, tilemakers, glassblowers, pottery producers, and a range of other craftsmen all became hour-to-hour consumers of charcoal.

   • 2023 March 8, Howard Johnston, “Was Marples the real railway wrecker?”, in RAIL, number 978, page 50:

     After decades of the type of mismanagement that proliferated across all the nationalised industries, the government was already aware that British Railways was in deep trouble.

Derived terms

• proliferative

Related terms

• proliferous
• prolific

Translations

to increase in number or spread

• Bulgarian: разпространявам се (razprostranjavam se)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 激增 (zh) (jīzēng), 劇增／剧增 (zh) (jùzēng), 擴散／扩散 (zh) (kuòsàn), 增生 (zh) (zēngshēng), 增殖 (zh) (zēngzhí)

• Dutch: snel vermenigvuldigen
• Finnish: lisääntyä nopeasti (to increase in number), levitä nopeasti (to spread)
• German: sich ausbreiten, sich vermehren
• Maori: koke (of news), whakaranea
• Portuguese: proliferar (pt)
• Russian: размножа́ться (ru) impf (razmnožátʹsja), размно́житься (ru) pf (razmnóžitʹsja) (intransitive, to multiply), распространя́ться (ru) impf (rasprostranjátʹsja), распространи́ться (ru) pf (rasprostranítʹsja) (intransitive, to spread), распространя́ть (ru) impf (rasprostranjátʹ), распространи́ть (ru) pf (rasprostranítʹ) (transitive, to spread)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: пролифери́рати

  Roman: proliferírati (sh)

• Spanish: proliferar (es)

Further reading

• “proliferate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “proliferate”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Italian

Etymology 1

Verb

proliferate

1. inflection of proliferare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

Participle

proliferate f pl

1. feminine plural of proliferato

Anagrams

• petrolifera

Spanish

Verb

proliferate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of proliferar combined with te