depopulate

Word origin

First attested in 1531; borrowed from Latin dēpopulātus, perfect active participle of dēpopulor (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)). Compare depeople, French dépeupler, Italian spopolare, Spanish despoblar, Portuguese despovoar and Romanian despopora; by surface analysis, de- + populate. Participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.

Used in a sentence

• “Where is this viper That would depopulate the city and Be every man himself?”

• “So two young Mountain Lions, nurs’d with Blood In deep Recesses of the gloomy Wood, Rush fearless to the Plains, and uncontroul’d Depopulate the Stalls and waste the Fold;”

• “The agricultural modernization of the 1950s and 1960s, the migration of the sons and daughters of peasants to the cities, had been steadily depleting and depopulating the French countryside.”

Source: Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0