propagate
/ˈprɒpəɡeɪt
/verb [with object]
1Breed specimens of (a plant or animal) by natural processes from the parent stock: try propagating your own houseplants from cuttings...
- Cultivars must be vegetatively propagated using plant tissue culture and this is a time-consuming and costly process requiring large tracts of experimental fields.
- Gay shopped plant sales, propagated her own stock and taught her daughter how to take cuttings.
- As with black Sampson coneflower, propagation by root division is rarely successful, so propagate this species by seed after moist stratification.
Synonyms
breed, grow, cultivate, generate
technical layer, pipe
1.1 [no object] (Of a plant or animal) reproduce by natural processes: the plant propagates freely from stem cuttings...
- Turning from the very small to the very large, mathematics has also proved useful in understanding how particular tree species propagate across a geographic region.
- Trees can propagate sexually or vegetatively.
- They reduce wildfire damage, help fire-dependent species propagate, and remove competing species like red maple.
Synonyms
reproduce, multiply, proliferate, breed, procreate, increase, spawn;
self-seed, self-sow
2Spread and promote (an idea, theory, etc.) widely: the French propagated the idea that the English were drunkards...
- I dislike theories that propagate the idea of one pole vs. another and indeed the idea that we, as a race, have somewhere to go.
- I am an educator; I like to think that my ideas are propagated through education, but I don't want to force my work on people.
- The bill did not propagate a radical new idea, he said, but one that had existed in various forms for more than a century.
Synonyms
spread, disseminate, communicate, pass on, put about, make known, promulgate, circulate, transmit, distribute, broadcast, publish, publicize, proclaim, preach, promote;
propagandize
3 [with adverbial of direction] (With reference to motion, light, sound, etc.) transmit or be transmitted in a particular direction or through a medium: [with object]: electromagnetic effects can be propagated at a finite velocity only through material substances...
- As light is propagated through a biological medium, components of that light are either propagated forward in the medium, absorbed by molecules, or scattered in all directions within the medium.
- Sound waves are propagated within a medium, and simply do not exist ‘in the absence of interactions’.
- It is only when mysteriously united to a body that spirit is brought into relationship with place or extension, and under such a condition alone, and only through such a medium, can it propagate motion.
Derivatives
propagative
- The propagative stages of the nematode occur exclusively in adult male crickets; thus adult females crickets are refractory to infection.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin propagat- 'multiplied from layers or shoots', from the verb propagare; related to propago 'young shoot' (from a base meaning 'fix').