How to Use colonize in a Sentence

colonize

verb
  • Weeds quickly colonized the field.
  • The island had been colonized by plants and animals.
  • The area was colonized in the 18th century.
  • Bezos also want to build the infrastructure to colonize space one day, starting with a presence on the moon.
    CBS News, 20 July 2019
  • By that year, waterwheels had colonized the edges of Big Pond in New York.
    Marion Renault, New York Times, 13 Aug. 2019
  • No single trip will deliver everything humans will need to colonize.
    Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, 21 July 2019
  • Portuguese explorers aimed to spread Catholicism in Africa, colonize both people and land, and grow rich.
    National Geographic, 13 Aug. 2019
  • SpaceX's Elon Musk also is rooting for the moon, although his heart is on colonizing Mars.
    Author: Marcia Dunn, Anchorage Daily News, 22 July 2019
  • SpaceX’s Elon Musk also is rooting for the moon, although his heart is on colonizing Mars.
    Washington Post, 21 July 2019
  • Now that a trumpeting fraudulence has become one of the modes of power, and the mega-real has colonized reality?
    James Parker, The Atlantic, 19 July 2019
  • In fact, rafting may have been one way islands like New Zealand were initially colonized by some organisms.
    Raleigh McElvery, Smithsonian, 12 Aug. 2019
  • SpaceX envisions mass-producing the suits one day—in pursuit of its long-term goal of colonizing Mars—and this first flight test was a key step.
    Jeffrey Kluger, TIME, 12 Sep. 2024
  • The species colonized northern Sweden in the early 1900s during the construction of railroads.
    Anders Brodin, Scientific American, 25 June 2024
  • Much of the roof is gone, and weeds colonize what remains of the floor.
    Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian, 21 Nov. 2019
  • Space agencies from around the world hope to colonize the moon one day.
    Nora McGreevy, Smithsonian Magazine, 19 May 2020
  • Jeff Bezos seems to have run out of things to colonize here on Earth.
    Kara Alaimo, CNN, 7 June 2021
  • The microbes that colonize cheese come from many places.
    Ute Eberle, Discover Magazine, 27 Nov. 2022
  • In Italy, the truffles grow in select spots, colonizing near the roots of oak, beech and poplar trees.
    Bernhard Warner, New York Times, 11 Nov. 2023
  • At the time the helmet was in use, the Roman Empire was in the early stages of colonizing Britain.
    Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, 25 Mar. 2024
  • Since the first blocks of marble were sunk in 2015—and rapidly colonized by fish and plants— the gallery has grown steadily.
    Tristan Kennedy, WIRED, 19 Mar. 2024
  • And don't forget, Elon's vision is to go to Mars and colonize Mars.
    Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 24 June 2024
  • The film stars Robert Pattinson and centers on a clone that’s sent to colonize a new world.
    Carolyn Giardina, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Mar. 2023
  • The pressure pushes out colonized sap that oozes down the branches and trunk.
    oregonlive, 27 Oct. 2019
  • This is not the first time terns have navigated to the Long Beach Harbor to colonize.
    Los Angeles Times, 16 July 2021
  • England asks about colonizing the world for spices, only to find out salt is too much.
    Bethy Squires, Vulture, 11 Mar. 2024
  • Still, there's a mad scramble under way to colonize the streets.
    Bernhard Warner, Fortune, 14 June 2021
  • The ship moved on, and Spain didn’t colonize California until the late 1700s.
    Los Angeles Times, 5 July 2022
  • But the backdrop is a very near future where a race of aliens has colonized Earth through economic means.
    Kaely Monahan, The Arizona Republic, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Then in the mid-1800s, the pioneers came from the East Coast with their belief in Manifest Destiny, their moral right to colonize the land.
    Sunny Dooley, Scientific American, 8 July 2020
  • The new romantic comedy is set in the future, where the best of the best humans reside and colonize on Mars.
    Samantha Olson, Seventeen, 30 Mar. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'colonize.' 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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