overpopulate
Americanverb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of overpopulate
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:
Authorities are now looking at translocating some animals so they don't overpopulate the area.
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2024
Experts warn that human-assisted tree migration must account for the risk of introducing nonnative species into an area where they could overpopulate and outcompete native species for water and soil nutrients.
From Scientific American ● May 5, 2023
Like everything wonderful and good in the entertainment industry, the limited series has become so trendy that it is threatening to overpopulate itself into extinction.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2022
With a nod to those who already mentioned the invasive aspect, is there not a concern with a creature that can seemingly overpopulate every body of water it inhabits?
From New York Times ● Feb. 5, 2018
They increase very rapidly, and at not infrequent intervals they overpopulate the island, and then perish by hundreds of starvation and the diseases which follow a too meagre diet.
From Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands by Nordhoff, Charles
"If you were drawing up a country from scratch, a well-educated, well-resourced, not overpopulated country would be what you would want, right? So, I think Canada has all those things, all those features," he said.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
Whether you are a grasshopper or a bird or a human, if you start destroying the environment in which you live, then you are overpopulated.
From Salon ● Nov. 30, 2024
That’s the way nature designed it and how it worked for thousands of years until humans mucked it up — mostly as we overpopulated California after World War II.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 29, 2024
She agreed with the agency’s argument that it had the authority to round up horses as soon as it determined the herd was overpopulated.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 29, 2024
And it's amazing to me, because I can look at everything—the whole overpopulated, overtraveled, overtrucked, overpaved, overbillboarded, full-color, three-dimensional world zipping by at seventy miles an hour—and I can get bored.
From "Things Not Seen" by Andrew Clements
"Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest," Dr. Jane Goodall, the famous primatologist, once said.
From Salon ● Aug. 19, 2023
Why is it prima facie an obvious good in and of itself that our species collectively keep overpopulating the earth?
From The Guardian ● Jul. 6, 2020
His findings led to the concept of the “behavioral sink” and suggested that evolution had given animals, perhaps including humans, an innate and irreversible self-destruct button to prevent a species from overpopulating its habitat.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 19, 2017
Like domestic sheep left unattended in a fenced pasture, we humans are eating and defecating and overpopulating the very ecosystems that support life.
From New York Times ● Oct. 25, 2016
We talk about the ecological burden of overpopulating the planet.
From Time ● Dec. 17, 2014
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
