pullulate

American  

[puhl-yuh-leyt] / ˈpʌl yəˌleɪt /

verb (used without object)

pullulated, pullulating

1. to send forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.

2. to breed, produce, or create rapidly.

3. to increase rapidly; multiply.

4. to exist abundantly; swarm; teem.

5. to be produced as offspring.

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pullulate British  

/ ˈpʌljʊˌleɪt /

verb

1. (of animals, etc) to breed rapidly or abundantly; teem; swarm

2. (of plants or plant parts) to sprout, bud, or germinate

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Other Word Forms

• pullulation noun

Etymology

Origin of pullulate

First recorded in 1610–20; from Latin pullulāt(us) (past participle of pullulāre “to sprout, bring forth young”), derivative of pullulus “a sprout, nestling, chick,” diminutive of pullus “foal, young of an animal”; pullet

Example Sentences

Those of us in my trade should remember it can generate communities and pullulate with kindness and creativity rather than conspiracy and contempt.

From BBC • Jan. 12, 2024

Willows pullulate with blotchy foliage that recalls her fellow Austrian Gustav Klimt.

From New York Times • Jan. 27, 2020

What documentaries will look like ten or twenty years from now, when every life, prominent or otherwise, will pullulate with digital traces, one shudders to think.

From The New Yorker • Jul. 1, 2015

They pullulate as sylphs in Pope's Rape of the Lock; they appear in the verses of Drayton, Herrick, Milton, Spenser, Coleridge, Shelley and Blake.

From Time Magazine Archive

Our houses stand on acres of ground, they ascend as high as the Tower of Babylon; they swarm with columns like a forest; they pullulate into statues and pictures.

From Callista : a Tale of the Third Century by Newman, John Henry