How to Use populate in a Sentence

populate

verb
  • Strange creatures populate the ocean depths.
  • Immigrants began to populate the area in the late 19th century.
  • Stars from around the world will populate the front rows or strut down the catwalk.
    Brendan Le, Peoplemag, 24 Sep. 2024
  • That morning when Collinson wrote down a list of things that would populate her dream life, skiing wasn’t on it.
    Anna Callaghan, Outside Online, 17 Nov. 2022
  • The other dozen songs that populate the setlist are Mitchell classics.
    Chris Willman, Variety, 11 May 2023
  • The fields are dry and barren now, populated by desert plants, the only kind hearty enough to survive.
    Mustafa Salim, Washington Post, 16 Aug. 2023
  • This is to say nothing of what factors may populate the social realm...
    James Freeman, WSJ, 25 Apr. 2022
  • For decades, Kirschenbaum was the doyenne of hard-core opera buffs who populated the standing-room sections at the Met.
    Javier C. Hernández, New York Times, 11 Jan. 2024
  • The Southeast and Midwest are much more densely populated than the Plains.
    Jennifer Gray, CNN, 8 Apr. 2023
  • Nearly all the actors who populate those films are white.
    Brent Lang, Variety, 24 July 2024
  • For decades now, Ye has been building new worlds and waiting for people to populate them.
    Jon Caramanica, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2022
  • What’s easier to grasp is the human appeal of the other figures who populate the pages of this book.
    Nikhil Krishnan, The New Yorker, 26 Sep. 2022
  • Director William Asher asked him to bring along some of his surfing pals to populate the film.
    Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Mar. 2022
  • The film is largely populated by birds, and every bird seems to be waiting for him.
    Moeko Fujii, The New Yorker, 2 May 2024
  • At first, this was an idyll of pool parties and cookouts populated by the likes of Ben Vereen and Margaret Avery.
    Gary Baum, The Hollywood Reporter, 10 Nov. 2023
  • The San Jose roster is populated with a number of other top picks from last year’s draft.
    Evan Webeck, The Mercury News, 2 Apr. 2024
  • Not the actuality of it, but the people in it, the people who populate it.
    Wilson Chapman, Variety, 24 Apr. 2022
  • That voice sets him apart from the other singers that populate country radio.
    Emily Yahr, Washington Post, 22 Sep. 2022
  • Many clouds did populate the Tuesday skies, their numbers swelling or contracting as the warm hours passed.
    Martin Weil, Washington Post, 3 July 2024
  • Logging in opens a webpage and populates the panel with your shareable projects.
    PCMAG, 1 May 2024
  • The characters that populate The Rings of Power are elves, dwarves, harfoots, and some humans.
    Emily Burack, Town & Country, 2 Sep. 2022
  • Pear, apple, maple, and cherry trees grow, and families of ducks, foxes, geese, and deer populate the area.
    Rachel Chang, Condé Nast Traveler, 10 Jan. 2023
  • Only a million people live here; the state is one of the nation’s largest by area and least densely populated.
    Lisa Bonos, Anchorage Daily News, 4 June 2023
  • Plus, five holiday albums populate the top 10 — the most in a year — led by Michael Bublé’s former No. 1 Christmas.
    Keith Caulfield, Billboard, 2 Jan. 2023
  • Look through any of my four published From the Farm cookbooks, and favorite salmon recipes populate the pages of every volume.
    Philip Potempa, Chicago Tribune, 17 Mar. 2023
  • But a plethora of hate groups still populate the site, and the company boosts its revenue by running ads on searches for these pages.
    Naomi Nix, Washington Post, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Headbands, eye masks, and boxes with electrodes that stick to the forehead all populate the market.
    Rachyl Jones, Fortune, 30 Nov. 2023
  • Sheer styles have populated red carpets for years — just take it from the Venice Film Festival.
    Hannah Malach, WWD, 5 Sep. 2024
  • But she’s also been urged by some supporters to make an appearance on Fox News, populated by voices on the right, even though Baier is on the network’s news side.
    Ted Johnson, Deadline, 14 Oct. 2024
  • In California, areas that are subject to wildfires that maybe weren’t populated in the past are populated now.
    Lauren J. Young, Scientific American, 9 Oct. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'populate.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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