proliferate

English

Etymology

From Latin proles (“offspring”) + ferre (“to bear”) + -ate.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pɹəˈlɪf.əɹ.eɪt/

Verb

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

   The flowers proliferated rapidly all spring.

   • 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.

Related terms

• proliferation
• proliferative
• proliferous
• prolific

 

Translations

to increase in number or spread

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 激增 (zh) (jīzēng), 劇增／剧增 (zh) (jùzēng), 剧增 (zh) (jùzēng), 擴散／扩散 (zh) (kuòsàn), 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
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• 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.

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Italian

Verb

proliferate

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

Anagrams

• petrolifera