colonizev.
/ˈkɒlənʌɪz/, U.S. /ˈkɑləˌnaɪz/ 1. intransitive. To settle in a place, country, etc.; to form or establish a colony or settlement.In quot. 1593 in extended use, of an animal; cf. later sense 4c.
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society > inhabiting and dwelling > furnishing with inhabitants > colonizing > colonize [verb (intransitive)]
to come ina1450
plant1555
colonize1593
people1596
settlea1682
1593 G. Harvey Pierces Supererogation 171 Asses cannot abide to inhabite the most-cold, & frosen territories of Scythia; but are glad to seeke their fortunes in other countryes, & to colonise in warmer seats.
1653 J. Howell German Diet sig. Mmv Then you have Pembrockshire, where there are many Families of the Flemish race, that were sent to colonize there by King Henry, for bridling of the Welsh.
1796 T. W. Tone Writings (2009) II. 289 Thus ended, for the second time, my attempt to colonise in the South Seas, a measure which I still think might be attended with the most beneficial consequences to England.
1809 Select Rev. & Spirit of Foreign Mag. 2 168/1 If to colonize in India be to pass the whole of one's life in it, then do ninety out of the hundred colonize.
1868 J. E. T. Rogers Man. Polit. Econ. (1876) xix. 259 Though the government does not colonise, it watches over emigration.
1921 Japanese Immigration: Hearings before Comm. Immigration & Naturalization (66th Congr., 2nd Session) ii. 583 I do not think it is wise for the Jews to colonize in New York City.
2014 I. Kovač Flat World: Arrival I. iv. 45 For all intents and purposes, the land is useless, and southerners have never bothered to colonize there as a result.
2. † c. transitive. U.S. To occupy (land) as a bona fide settler, in a way which grants one a specific legal status and property rights.Obsolete. rare.Apparently an isolated usage.
a. transitive. To settle (a place, region, etc.) with colonists, esp. as part of an effort by a state or ruler to appropriate the area settled and establish political control over it; to establish a colony or colonies in. More generally: to settle or populate (a place or region, esp. one regarded as uninhabited). Also intransitive.
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society > inhabiting and dwelling > furnishing with inhabitants > colonizing > colonize (a place) [verb (transitive)]
inhabit1390
planta1513
colonizea1626
colony1649
seat1684
settle1702
colonialize1971
a1626 [implied in: F. Bacon Advt. Holy Warre in Certaine Misc. Wks. (1629) 101 The further Occupation, and Colonizing, of those Countries. (at colonizing n.)].
1640 J. Howell Δενδρολογια 55 Those Islands which lye in the Carreere to Columbina, which she colonizeth, and fortifieth dayly more and more.
1650 J. Howell Addit. Lett. ix. 17 in Epistolæ Ho-elianæ (ed. 2) They that would thus colonize the stars with Inhabitants.
1659 T. Fuller Appeal Iniured Innocence i. 56 The South of this Island was sufficiently Colonized by the Romans, whereby Commerce and Civility ushered Christianity into Brittain.
1771 A. Ramsay Hist. Ess. Eng. Constit. 181 When the plan of colonizing the lands in America, was adopted it was adopted for the general good of the whole community, and not for the particular good of the settlers.
1780 W. Coxe Acct. Russ. Discov. 4 The Southern district was conquered and colonised.
1807 R. Southey Lett. from Eng. I. xxii. 253 It is a part of the English system to colonize with criminals.
1829 J. Macgregor Obs. Emigration Brit. Amer. 63 The prosperity of this Colony induced his Lordship to attempt colonizing the lands beyond Lake Superior, on the banks of the Red River.
1841 Farmers' Reg. May 269/1 Ten years afterwards tracts of land were colonized upon the banks of the Mississippi.
1868 W. E. Gladstone Juventus Mundi (1870) ii. 49 The descendant of Kadmos, who had colonised Thebes from Phoenicia.
1937 Discovery Aug. 234/2 As late as 1918 the Baltic barons..were planning to colonise Estonia with two and a half million small farmers from Germany.
2007 F. E. Rutledge Red, White, & Blue: Issue viii. 93 God was mentioned when this land [sc. America] was colonized by the British government.
2020 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 18 Aug. d5/1 As settlers began to colonize America, they brought with them measurements from their former countries.
b. transitive. To bring (the inhabitants of another country) under political control; to subject (people) to colonial rule or influence.
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1796 ‘F. Pascalis’ Let. 12 Feb. in J. Hawkins Hist. Voy. Coast Afr. (1797) p. iii The hospitable and generous treatment you have received from the Ebo King and Nation, are sufficient proofs of the advantages..promised to all powers of the earth, if..they would exert themselves in civilizing and colonizing the numerous tribes of those immense countries.
1878 A. H. Bellingham tr. P. C. A. de Haulleville Social Aspects Catholicism & Protestantism iv. 117 The French missionaries in China..go into the interior of the country to preach the gospel and colonize the natives, in which attempts they frequently suffer martyrdom.
1934 J. Rodker tr. E. K. Maillart Turkestan Solo v. 173 How do the Uzbeks feel towards the Russians, who colonized them in the first place?
1974 V. Hamilton P. Robeson viii. 102 America and the USSR set up military governments in Korea, paying little attention to that country's people, who had been colonized by the Japanese for half a century.
2020 A. S. Richards Raising Free People (e-book ed.) We..are still examining how our past as part of a people who had been colonized is affecting our present.
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1909 S. E. White Rules of Game v. xix It appears as though the lands were ‘colonized’.
d. transitive. To affect, influence, or shape (the minds, culture, attitudes, etc., of a colonized people) through the experience of colonization or colonial rule and its power structures; esp. to do this in order to render the indigenous inhabitants of a colonized country more accepting of or submissive to colonial authority. In extended use: to make submissive to or accepting of traditional western power structures through education, cultural influence, etc.
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1965 Nationalist (Dar es Salaam) 23 Aug. in Daily Rep. Foreign Radio Broadcasts (Foreign Broadcast Information Service) 24 Aug. i. 10 [It is said that in colonial days, though education, religion, films, information services, public platforms, and state institutions, work had been done by colonialists] to colonize the minds of the African people in order to subdue them.
1988 H. A. Giroux & P. McLaren in H. A. Giroux Teachers as Intellectuals xiv. 190 Schooling colonizes the attitudes of students and teaches them to accept their low-track status as unquestionable and inviolable.
2013 J. H. Miller Forew. in Ming Dong Gu Sinologism p. xvii We have colonized the minds of many Chinese scholars who write about China, as well as the minds of ordinary Chinese people.
3.
a. transitive. To establish (a person) as a colonist; to settle or resettle (people, typically a group with a shared identity, status, etc.) in a colony. From the late 18th cent., frequently with reference to schemes to settle free black people from the United States, especially those recently emancipated from slavery, in colonies, esp. in Africa (now historical).
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society > inhabiting and dwelling > furnishing with inhabitants > colonizing > colonize (a place) [verb (transitive)] > settle (a person) as colonist
planteOE
settle1570
colonize1735
1735 Bibliotheca Biblia V. 315 Strangers or Aliens should be disqualify'd for the Jewish Throne. Least..they should transplant or colonize them for their own ends and advantages in another Countrey.., under pretence of settling them in a more fertile part of the World.
1789 H. H. Brackenridge in Early Amer. Lit. 22 (1987) 311 I would have these black people led out by some generous mind and colonized, perhaps beyond the Ohio or the Mississippi river.
1805 T. Branagan Serious Remonstrance (title page) A simplified plan for colonizing the free negroes of the northern, in conjunction with those..from the southern states, in a distant part of the national territory: considered as the only possible means of avoiding the deleterious evils attendant on Slavery in a Republic.
1832 N. Amer. Rev. July 137 A number of negroes have been colonized in pursuance of this regulation.
1840 L. Blanchard in New Monthly Mag. 60 411 Look at the thousands of inthralled and helpless residents colonized north of Hyde-park.
1933 Democrat & Chron. (Rochester, N.Y.) 30 Dec. 10/3 (heading) To canvass Jewish homes in campaign seeking fund to colonize refugees in Palestine.
1978 R. F. Berkhofer, Jr. White Man's Indian iv. 157 For Jefferson, removing the Indians into the..Louisiana Purchase was, like his plan for colonizing emancipated Blacks in Africa, a way of expelling..those influences he believed deleterious to the American spirit.
2019 Impact News Service (Nexis) 6 Mar. After the ending of the war in 2009, through expansion of Mahaweli project in L Zone, 6000 Sinhala families have been colonized in the Welioya area.
b. transitive. U.S. Politics. To place or register (political supporters) in a district where their votes may decide a closely contested election; to fill (a district) with such voters. Also intransitive. Now chiefly historical. Cf. colonization n. 3a, colonizer n. 2a, colonist n. 4.
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1838 Globe (Washington, D.C.) 12 Oct. Another reason for colonizing voters in this county is, that it forms part of a Senatorial district, which elects two Senators this year. These fraudulent votes, it is feared, will elect Federal Senators by less than 100 majority.
1885 Cent. Mag. Feb. 636 Arrangements are made for colonizing voters from the neighboring States.
1903 N.Y. Tribune 13 Sept. The attempt to colonize in the Third Ward by a faction of the Democratic party was frustrated to-day.
1948 New Yorker 25 Sept. 26/1 Floaters are retainers of political organizations, and it's still common practice to ‘colonize’ doubtful districts with them.
2020 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 26 Oct. Men who had once colonized districts wrote new elections laws.
c. transitive. Chiefly U.S. Politics. To place (a person) surreptitiously in a place, group, organization, etc., typically in order to disseminate or promote a particular political agenda or cause; to infiltrate (a place, group, organization, etc.) in this way. Now rare (chiefly historical).Chiefly with reference to the activities of communist parties in American workplaces and industries in the 20th cent.
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1929 Daily Worker (N.Y.) 23 Dec. 4/2 The Young Communist League will have to be drawn into this work—the comrades to be colonized will have to be trained.
1949 in Amer. Speech (1955) 30 284 Communist plans to ‘colonize’ key U.S. industrial plant[s].
2000 L. D. Benin New Labor Radicalism & N.Y.C.'s Garment Industry (2018) v. 119 Following a strategy that the C[ommunist] P[arty] had employed, P[rogressive] L[abor] proposed a plan to colonize industry.
4. Chiefly Biology.
a. transitive. Of a plant, animal, or other organism: to spread into or become established in (an area, habitat, host organism, etc.); to form a colony in (a place) or on (a substrate or host).
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1781 J. Barbut Les Genres des Insectes de Linné 328/1 Man, the chief lord of the other animals, is..the food and ordinary abode of this vermin [sc. the louse], who riots in his blood, and sometimes colonizes his body with an innumerable and detestable offspring.
1847 C. Darwin in Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 19 55 The fact of South Australia possessing only few peculiar species, it having apparently been colonized from the eastern and western coasts, is very interesting.
1869 A. Fowler in Amer. Naturalist 3 9 [The swallows] are usually placed in a chimney, in which a number of pairs breed, for they colonize the same place to the number of three or four pairs, and sometimes to fifty pairs, more or less.
1967 Jrnl. Pediatrics 70 139/1 Their ability to grow on many different substrates under a wide range of environmental conditions has enabled some of the aspergilli to colonize living and dead animal tissue.
2014 J. Alonso Wild Flowers Ordesa & Monte Perdido National Park 80 Its peculiar root system allows this plant to colonise mobile limestone screes.
b. transitive. To establish (a plant, animal, or other organism) in a new area or habitat; to form a colony of (an organism) by deliberate introduction or artificial breeding.In quot. 1816 perhaps an extended use of sense 3a.
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the world > food and drink > farming > gardening > management of plants > [verb (transitive)] > other processes
unplant1552
ingentle1622
blanch1669
tack1693
colonize1816
1816 P. B. Shelley Let. 22 July (1964) I. 501 These [seeds] I mean to colonize in my garden.
1890 Pop. Gardening May 172/1 If a sufficient number of Lady bugs are put in the greenhouse, and there colonized, plant lice will give no further trouble.
1905 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 29 Apr. 923/2 By breeding and colonizing the bacteria they tried to inoculate the soil.
1993 M. W. Service in R. P. Lane & R. W. Crosskey Med. Insects & Arachnids v. 221 Only very few mosquito species have been colonized.
c. intransitive. Of a plant, animal, or other organism: to spread to a new area, habitat, host organism, etc.; to form or establish a (breeding) colony.
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the world > life > biology > balance of nature > distribution > [verb (intransitive)] > colonize an environment
colonize1833
the world > plants > by habitat or distribution > inhabit or colonize [verb (intransitive)] > colonize new territory
migrate1859
immigrate1889
colonize1924
pioneer1960
1833 T. Brown in White's Nat. Hist. Selborne (new ed.) 142 While these birds [sc. martins] colonized in the upper part of the cave, a pair of kestrels had taken up their abode..under a projecting ledge at the entrance.
1890 Sci. Amer. 11 Jan. 28/3 Decay is generally supposed to be started by some germs of bacteria from the air colonizing on the object.
1924 Maine Naturalist Aug. 78 That crustaceous Lichen Buella geographica..is the first plant to colonize on the bare rocks.
1995 R. J. C. McLean et al. in H. M. Lappin-Scott & J. W. Costerton Microbial Biofilms (2003) xvi. 261/1 Uropathogens are able to ascend through the urethra into the bladder, the prostate (in males) and less often into the kidneys where they colonize and cause infection.
2014 I. Abbott et al. in A. S. Glen & C. R. Dickman Carnivores Austral. v. 83/1 Rabbits colonised from the east in ~1905 first becoming a pest in 1918.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2022).
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