pullulate
Americanverb (used without object)
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to send forth sprouts, buds, etc.; germinate; sprout.
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to breed, produce, or create rapidly.
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to increase rapidly; multiply.
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to exist abundantly; swarm; teem.
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to be produced as offspring.
verb
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(of animals, etc) to breed rapidly or abundantly; teem; swarm
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(of plants or plant parts) to sprout, bud, or germinate
Other Word Forms
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”; see origin at pullet
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:
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
The parties too, that already began to pullulate, were not better satisfied with the issue of the Champ de Mai.
From Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II by Fleury de Chaboulon, Pierre Alexandre Édouard, baron
Their home in Grove Terrace, Highgate – workaday Georgian moderated with 1950s wallpapers and furniture – pullulated with life.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 2, 2010
It urges the necessity for linking up with vital forces, but forgets that the real vital force of the German people has hitherto only pullulated under its skull.
From Selected Essays by Stenning, H. J.
The majority of the little circles that once pullulated in Paris no longer exist.
From Unicorns by Huneker, James
From the sea-shore to the shady green park, from the park to the dim distance, the land pullulated with people.
From From Sea to Sea Letters of Travel by Kipling, Rudyard
Squalid babies, with wan, pathetic faces, pullulated on the doorsteps; they showed from behind dingy windows at the breasts of haggard women.
From Without Prejudice by Zangwill, Israel
Mangrove doesn't stand – it floats and sweats, pullulating with malign life.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 28, 2011
Its collection of painting and sculpture, entirely European, stops at the threshold of the 20th century--the most recent picture in it is James Ensor's huge, pullulating satire, The Entry of Christ into Brussels, 1888.
From Time Magazine Archive
Last week Dr. Armand-Delille was probably sorry, because myxomatosis was pullulating over most of France, killing up to 99% of the wild rabbits.
From Time Magazine Archive
It now takes a bribe to get a child into school, to get a milk card, even to get a long-distance railway ticket, let alone any of the innumerable licenses that India's pullulating bureaucracy demands.
From Time Magazine Archive
Records attesting to his death were pullulating like insect eggs and verifying each other beyond all contendon.
From "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller
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.
