proliferate
verb
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Proliferate is a back-formation of proliferation. That means that proliferation came first (we borrowed it from French in the 1700s), and was later shortened to form the verb. Proliferation originally referred to the botanical phenomenon of some plants having buds, flowers, or other parts that are adventitious—that is, that arise or occur sporadically or in other than the usual location (e.g. pitch pines’ ability to sprout new trees directly from their stumps after a fire). With advances in the study of biology in the 1800s, proliferation came to be used to refer to the rapid and repeated production of cells by division. That sense in turn begat the verb proliferate, which eventually came to be used when anything—whether living (such as yeast) or nonliving (such as data)—quickly increases or multiplies.
Synonyms
Examples of proliferate in a Sentence
Daniel Kreps, Rolling Stone, 27 Oct. 2024
There’s a homelessness crisis intertwined with a fentanyl crisis on the streets, retailers are locking away more merchandise to deter shoplifters, metals thieves are making off with whole streetlamps, and sometimes destructive, sometimes deadly street takeovers are proliferating.
—Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 25 Oct. 2024
Burmese pythons have since proliferated in the state’s muggy warmth.
—Longreads, 25 Oct. 2024
While this year hasn’t seen data collection events like the ones that proliferated in 2016, the mission of the End of Term Web Archive remains clear.
—Leslie Katz, Forbes, 23 Oct. 2024
See all Example Sentences for proliferate 
Dictionary Entries Near proliferate
Cite this Entry
“Proliferate.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proliferate. Accessed 8 Nov. 2024.
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proliferate
verb
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proliferate
verb
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