proliferate
Americanverb (used with or without object)
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proliferates,
present (3rd person singular)
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proliferated,
past participle, past
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proliferating
present participle
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to grow or produce by multiplication of parts, as in budding or cell division, or by procreation.
-
to increase in number or spread rapidly and often excessively.
verb
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to grow or reproduce (new parts, cells, etc) rapidly
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to grow or increase or cause to grow or increase rapidly
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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proliferatesimple
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proliferatessimple
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have proliferatedperfect
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has proliferatedperfect
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am proliferatingprogressive
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are proliferatingprogressive
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is proliferatingprogressive
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have been proliferatingperfect progressive
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has been proliferatingperfect progressive
Past
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proliferatedsimple
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had proliferatedperfect
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was proliferatingprogressive
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were proliferatingprogressive
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had been proliferatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of proliferate
First recorded in 1870–75; prolifer(ous) + -ate 1
Explanation
When something proliferates, it's growing, spreading or multiplying really quickly. Bunny rabbits have a habit of proliferating, as do dandelions in untended gardens and funny YouTube videos on the internet. Proliferate was originally a biological term used to describe the growth of cells and producing offspring. It wasn’t until 1961 that we started to use proliferate more generally to talk about everything from the spread of nuclear weapons to the wide growth of Walmart. Other similar words include expand, reproduce, snowball, and spawn.
Vocabulary lists containing proliferate
Essential Academic Vocabulary for High School Students, List 1
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The Vernal Vocabulary of Spring
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Just Mercy
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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:
Some of the artificial intelligence boom’s biggest beneficiaries can cash in whether open models proliferate or not.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026
But individual ticks are capable of carrying more than one disease simultaneously, and as their territories proliferate, healthcare professionals are warning Americans to pay attention to strange symptoms.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
If predictions turn out to be true, in a few years agents will proliferate to the point where they outnumber people on enterprise networks.
From Barron's ● May 8, 2026
There’s been general concern about whether traditional software vendors will be able to hold their ground as artificial-intelligence tools proliferate.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 28, 2026
But a bok- anovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide.
From "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley
Some of that message is getting through to younger generations today, as well, as the information about tax strategy proliferates.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 16, 2026
“The Murder Game” proliferates taxonomies of its own, which often overlap and can become repetitive, especially when the same material is repeated across different chapters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 20, 2026
“With significant near-term opportunities ahead as AEC adoption proliferates across hyperscalers and as new products ramp to production, we expect Credo to beat current consensus estimates.”
From Barron's ● Jan. 9, 2026
The more an image proliferates in the world, the more nagging it is, and naturally, our brains twist these repetitive ideas into humor to blunt their obnoxiousness.
From Salon ● Oct. 9, 2025
That one moment of it proliferates into the next by transitions which, whether conjunctive or disjunctive, continue the experiential tissue, can not, I contend, be denied.
From Essays in Radical Empiricism by William James
After a bigger splash at the New York World’s Fair in 1964, Mold-A-Ramas proliferated across the U.S., popping up in zoos, museums and anywhere tourists might exchange a coin for a toy.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
These privately owned e-scooters are illegal to ride on public roads across the UK, but they've proliferated regardless.
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
Mineral extraction projects looking for copper, lithium and more have proliferated across the Argentine Andes.
From Barron's ● Jun. 15, 2026
That’s a proliferated low-Earth-orbit constellation made up of likely hundreds, or even thousands, of satellites designed to provide high-speed communications for the Pentagon.
From MarketWatch ● May 26, 2026
Confederate monuments, memorials, and imagery proliferated throughout the South during the Civil Rights Era.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
Meanwhile, the investment terms on early-stage deals, such as the proliferating use of SAFEs, or simple agreements for future equity, have become very founder friendly and leave investors with few protections.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
Cook also addressed Apple's impending public relaunch of Siri, an AI assistant that the company has seemingly struggled to make competitive in an era of proliferating AI chatbots from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
Tiny new Christian schools, often operating in Sunday school spaces in churches, are proliferating.
From Salon ● Jul. 27, 2026
AI-generated influencers, virtual personalities and digital performers are already proliferating online, while entertainment companies continue to experiment with AI-created characters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
Nor did they seem aware of the proliferating giant that was our field organization.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
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.
