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Synonyms

colonize

American

[kol-uh-nahyz] / ˈkɒl əˌnaɪz /

especially British, colonise

verb (used with object)

1. (of a nation or government) to claim and forcibly take control of (a territory other than its own), usually sending some of its own people to settle there.
  
  England colonized Australia.
2. to move from one’s own country and settle in (such a territory).
  
  Dutch farmers were among the first Europeans to colonize the river valleys of New Jersey and New York.
to be the first settlers in.

Southern Pacific islanders are thought to have colonized Hawaii around a.d. 450.
to compel or induce (people) to settle in an area for economic or political purposes.

The government made efforts to colonize laborers and their families in areas suitable for growing rice.
Biology. (of a species of plant or animal) to move or be transported to (a new habitat) and seek to become established there.

Arthropods were the first animal species to colonize land around 450 million years ago.
Microbiology, Medicine/Medical. (of a microbe) to multiply on or in (another organism), especially without causing infection or disease.

Researchers attempted to get the bacteria in a probiotic to successfully colonize the intestines of 23 volunteers.

verb (used without object)

to take control of or settle in territories other than one’s own.

Many other European powers were colonizing during the modern period besides France.
When the British colonized in Australia, the basic rights of Aboriginals were taken away.

colonize British

/ ˈkɒləˌnaɪz /

verb

to send colonists to or establish a colony in (an area)
to settle in (an area) as colonists
(tr) to transform (a community) into a colony
(of plants and animals) to become established in (a new environment)

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

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Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of colonize

First recorded in 1615–25; colon(y) + -ize

Explanation

To colonize is to settle in, and take control of, land outside your own borders. Usually, a large, powerful country colonizes a territory or area that's much less powerful. There are many examples through history of powerful countries that colonized various regions of the world in order to gain natural resources or to obtain more land for their citizens to live in. When this happens, it's rarely good news for the people who lived there already. Colonize and colony come from the Latin colonus, "tenant farmer" or "settler in new land," from the root colere, "to cultivate, till, or inhabit."

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Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

colonize colonizes colonized colonizing

Their findings suggest that insects did not become fully terrestrial immediately after beginning to colonize land.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026

Now, SpaceX is planning to price its IPO at $135 a share at a valuation of roughly $1.77 trillion, with ambitions to colonize Mars.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

Likewise, the U.S. early in World War II stopped Japan from seaborne oil imports—targeting the very vulnerability Tokyo had sought to offset by trying to colonize its resource-rich Asian neighbors.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026

The discovery that bacteria can colonize surfaces even when their normal swimming machinery fails has important health implications.

From Science Daily ● Mar. 13, 2026

Black men arrive with Columbus as sailors, and other Africans come as soldiers with the Spanish explorers who later conquer and colonize the Caribbean islands and the Americas.

From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis

The team studied how C. albicans colonizes the gut.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2024

The fungus colonizes the trays, resulting in a material that, through an undisclosed proprietary procedure, looks and feels like leather, according to the company.

From Scientific American ● Mar. 28, 2022

Sometimes a fraction of a population breaks away and colonizes a new habitat.

From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2018

I have long held that ancestral memory colonizes not only our bodies, but our bodies in place.

From Salon ● Mar. 16, 2014

What he feels on the worst days of that relentless winter—while rust colonizes the truck and rifles and radios, while German divisions retreat all around them—is a deep scorn for all the humans they pass.

From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr

He adds: "We are particularly interested in investigating the environments they colonized and speciated in, especially in ecosystems dominated by large apex predators such as abelisaurids and megaraptorans."

From Science Daily ● May 29, 2026

Before Europeans colonized North America, bald eagles were pretty much everywhere there was a river, lake, or stream large enough to support sizable fish.

From Slate ● Feb. 21, 2026

It accounts for more than 200,000 jobs and has colonized entire neighborhoods.

From Barron's ● Feb. 16, 2026

The first to go in any forest colonized by people are the larger edible animals.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 29, 2026

For instance, although the Polynesians who colonized Easter Island around A.D.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

In a brief preface Mr. Hoffman has also told us about wrens colonizing an abandoned swallows’ nest above the door of the house he shares with his wife, Julia.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

Those include colonizing Mars, putting more than 1 million satellites in orbit and putting mass drivers on the moon.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026

Because wolves are not capable of naturally colonizing such an island across open sea, researchers believe humans must have brought the animals there, likely by boat.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 5, 2026

At this point in his public arc, his affinity for the material is more like a colonizing claim.

From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026

King George II, ignoring French claims to the Ohio River valley, had given permission for colonizing the area to the Ohio Company, a group of Virginia landowners and London merchants.

From "George Washington, Spymaster" by Thomas B. Allen

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023