How to Use colonize in a Sentence

colonize

verb
Definition of colonizenext
Synonyms for colonizenext
  • Weeds quickly colonized the field.
  • The island had been colonized by plants and animals.
  • The area was colonized in the 18th century.
  • Jeff Bezos seems to have run out of things to colonize here on Earth.
    — Kara Alaimo, CNN, 7 June 2021
  • The microbes that colonize cheese come from many places.
    — Ute Eberle, Discover Magazine, 27 Nov. 2022
  • In Italy, the truffles grow in select spots, colonizing near the roots of oak, beech and poplar trees.
    — Bernhard Warner, New York Times, 11 Nov. 2023
  • At the time the helmet was in use, the Roman Empire was in the early stages of colonizing Britain.
    — Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Since the first blocks of marble were sunk in 2015—and rapidly colonized by fish and plants— the gallery has grown steadily.
    — Tristan Kennedy, WIRED, 19 Mar. 2024
  • The film stars Robert Pattinson and centers on a clone that’s sent to colonize a new world.
    — Carolyn Giardina, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Mar. 2023
  • This is not the first time terns have navigated to the Long Beach Harbor to colonize.
    — Los Angeles Times, 16 July 2021
  • Still, there's a mad scramble under way to colonize the streets.
    — Bernhard Warner, Fortune, 14 June 2021
  • The ship moved on, and Spain didn’t colonize California until the late 1700s.
    — Los Angeles Times, 5 July 2022
  • But the backdrop is a very near future where a race of aliens has colonized Earth through economic means.
    — Kaely Monahan, The Arizona Republic, 17 Aug. 2023
  • The new romantic comedy is set in the future, where the best of the best humans reside and colonize on Mars.
    — Samantha Olson, Seventeen, 30 Mar. 2022
  • SpaceX is perhaps the most ambitious: Musk wants to colonize Mars.
    — Anna Russel, The New Yorker, 3 Aug. 2021
  • These microbes colonize on the surface of the case and then break the plastic down into its raw components.
    — Julian Chokkattu, Wired, 8 June 2021
  • The Ark One is among the ships that have been sent to colonize faraway planets in a last-ditch effort to save humanity.
    — Los Angeles Times Staff, Los Angeles Times, 17 Feb. 2023
  • Like rats on a sinking ship, your bacteria will soon have to abandon their host and survive out in the world long enough to find a new host to colonize.
    — Jennifer Debruyn, The Conversation, 28 Sep. 2023
  • But, at the same time, his idea to colonize Mars with a million people is an obscenity.
    — Michael Lapointe, The New Yorker, 26 Apr. 2022
  • Now that Blue Origin and its billionaire backer have entered the chat, the race to colonize low-Earth orbit is on.
    — Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Incredibly, 80 percent of the plastic trash that the team looked at showed signs of being colonized by coastal species.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 18 Apr. 2023
  • There are a lot of people who are brought in as exhibits, and those people are often colonized people.
    — Quartz Staff, Quartz, 2 May 2023
  • The notion of putting chicory in coffee came to Louisiana by way of the French, who colonized the area in the 17th century.
    — Taylor Tobin, Southern Living, 27 July 2023
  • Namibia was colonized by South Africa and later subject to its system of apartheid.
    — Melanie Stetson Freeman, The Christian Science Monitor, 19 Sep. 2023
  • Prince Charles was in Barbados for the historic ceremony and spoke of the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade that led the British to colonize parts of the region.
    — Aj Willingham, CNN, 30 Nov. 2021
  • Those who have been colonized, or even pushed away completely.
    — Tommy McArdle, Peoplemag, 10 Oct. 2023
  • Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, wants to colonize the moon.
    — Sheelah Kolhatkar, The New Yorker, 29 Nov. 2021
  • In 2012, a Dutch company called Mars One announced grand plans to colonize the red planet.
    — K.j. Yossman, Variety, 6 July 2023
  • But the plants grew, and that’s a big step for scientists looking to eventually colonize the moon.
    — Joe Mario Pedersen, Orlando Sentinel, 14 May 2022
  • The idea: Elon Musk has big plans to colonize Mars; but for now, the billionaire’s spacecraft company is working on taking tourists around the moon by 2023.
    — Cnt Editors, Condé Nast Traveler, 7 Sep. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'colonize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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