proliferate

UK/pɹəˈlɪf.əɹ.eɪt/US/pɹəˈlɪf.əɹ.eɪt/

verbC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans written

Other forms: proliferated, proliferating, proliferates

To proliferate is to increase quickly in number. Rumours proliferate.

It suggests spreading out of control rather than merely growing. Cells proliferate, which is the medical sense and the origin of the figurative one.

Definitions of proliferate

1verbproliferateTo increase quickly in number.C1
“Small committees proliferate whenever nobody is watching.”

proliferate is an action.

Where it comes from

A back-formation from proliferation, from Latin proles, offspring, plus ferre, to bear.

a back-formation from proliferation.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

proliferate in the wild

Some of these non-proliferating cells could respond to extrinsic stimuli and proliferate by re-entering the cell cycle.
G0 phase
Normally, lymphoblasts are found in the bone marrow, but in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), lymphoblasts proliferate uncontrollably and are found in large numbers in the peripheral blood.
Lymphoblast
More specifically, upon activation, satellite cells can re-enter the cell cycle to proliferate and differentiate into myoblasts.
Myosatellite cell
Activated satellite cells initially proliferate as skeletal myoblasts before undergoing myogenic differentiation.
Myosatellite cell
Because of this characteristic feature, the adjective lentiginous is used to describe other skin lesions that similarly proliferate linearly within the basal cell layer.
Lentigo

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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