How to Use populate in a Sentence

populate

verb
Definition of populatenext
Synonyms for populatenext
  • Strange creatures populate the ocean depths.
  • Immigrants began to populate the area in the late 19th century.
  • The other dozen songs that populate the setlist are Mitchell classics.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 11 May 2023
  • The fields are dry and barren now, populated by desert plants, the only kind hearty enough to survive.
    — Mustafa Salim, Washington Post, 16 Aug. 2023
  • For decades, Kirschenbaum was the doyenne of hard-core opera buffs who populated the standing-room sections at the Met.
    — Javier C. Hernández, New York Times, 11 Jan. 2024
  • The Southeast and Midwest are much more densely populated than the Plains.
    — Jennifer Gray, CNN, 8 Apr. 2023
  • At first, this was an idyll of pool parties and cookouts populated by the likes of Ben Vereen and Margaret Avery.
    — Gary Baum, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Nov. 2023
  • The San Jose roster is populated with a number of other top picks from last year’s draft.
    — Evan Webeck, The Mercury News, 2 Apr. 2024
  • Only a million people live here; the state is one of the nation’s largest by area and least densely populated.
    — Lisa Bonos, Anchorage Daily News, 4 June 2023
  • Look through any of my four published From the Farm cookbooks, and favorite salmon recipes populate the pages of every volume.
    — Philip Potempa, Chicago Tribune, 17 Mar. 2023
  • Headbands, eye masks, and boxes with electrodes that stick to the forehead all populate the market.
    — Rachyl Jones, Fortune, 30 Nov. 2023
  • This allows new animals and birds to populate the area.
    — Marina Johnson, Detroit Free Press, 12 Apr. 2023
  • From a black sand shoreline in Hawaii to a coastal enclave in Maryland that’s populated by wild horses, the best beaches in the US deliver on all of the above and then some.
    — Nicole Kliest, Vogue, 20 Feb. 2024
  • Why make a movie about not just a Black Christ, but an entire ancient city populated by people of color?
    — Helena Andrews-Dyer, Washington Post, 25 Jan. 2024
  • The opening comes after years of efforts to clean up an area once populated by homeless camps and littered with garbage, Jensen said.
    — Alixel Cabrera, The Salt Lake Tribune, 21 July 2023
  • And, given the need to stand out from the crowd, having a storefront that looks just like the other guy’s — and is populated with the same bots as the other guy’s — can also seem less than ideal.
    — Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, 23 Aug. 2023
  • By the third or fourth time that invoice comes in, it’ll be automatically scanned, and then the right fields will be populated.
    — Sheryl Estrada, Fortune, 12 Mar. 2024
  • The river is populated by rainbow trout, arctic char and salmon.
    — Natalie Kainz, NBC News, 13 Oct. 2023
  • One group arrived tucked into the hair of the East Asians who first populated the Americas.
    — Brian Handwerk, Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Nov. 2023
  • That, of course, came on top of the pure fan action already happening with excerpts of the nightly sing-alongs populating TikTok and Reels.
    — Chris Willman, Variety, 29 Nov. 2023
  • When the weather is warm, locals ditch the train and opt to commute by foot, populating the lively 4.1-mile-long linear park from Jamaica Plain to Back Bay.
    — Maggie Scales, BostonGlobe.com, 11 Aug. 2023
  • Rooftop coffee shops and chic cocktail bars populate the downtown area.
    — Keyaira Boone, Essence, 22 Sep. 2023
  • Background stars and galaxies populate the field of view and peek through the nebula of gas and dust that has been ejected from the aging massive star to span 10 light-years across space.
    — Alan Taylor, The Atlantic, 12 July 2023
  • They are known for their depictions of jaguars, which still populate the jungles of Chiapas.
    — Travel + Leisure Editors, Travel + Leisure, 22 June 2023
  • The Redland is a widespread, remote area in west Dade, populated by fruit and vegetable farms, nurseries and livestock.
    — David Goodhue and, Miami Herald, 16 Feb. 2024
  • The spirits who populate the films are complex and multifaceted, like oni.
    — Alex Orlando, Discover Magazine, 24 July 2023
  • Gua sha tools populate shelves at Target and Sephora, and YouTube abounds with routines for depuffing using the ancient techniques.
    — Rachel Murphy, Verywell Health, 4 Apr. 2023
  • For the fans, this landscape is like a Disney World populated by their favorite characters.
    — Irina Aleksander, New York Times, 20 Feb. 2024
  • It’s populated by Bedouin from the Jahalin tribe who were pushed off their lands in 1948 and settled here under Jordanian rule.
    — Taylor Luck, The Christian Science Monitor, 20 Nov. 2023
  • The world of cataphiles is populated with other words: Cataclasts are those who pollute the space; katacleans are the efforts of cataphiles to restore and clean the space.
    — Ingrid Rojas Contreras, New York Times, 22 Mar. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'populate.' 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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