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Depopulate   Listen
verb
Depopulate  v. t.  (past & past part. depopulated; pres. part. depopulating)  To deprive of inhabitants, whether by death or by expulsion; to reduce greatly the populousness of; to dispeople; to unpeople. "Where is this viper, That would depopulate the city?" Note: It is not synonymous with laying waste or destroying, being limited to the loss of inhabitants; as, an army or a famine may depopulate a country. It rarely expresses an entire loss of inhabitants, but often a great diminution of their numbers; as, the deluge depopulated the earth.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Depopulate" Quotes from Famous Books



... on the banks of the Orinoco, and should it penetrate thither, it is to be hoped that its effects may be immediately counteracted by vaccination, the blessings of which are daily felt along the coasts of Terra Firma. The causes which depopulate the Christian settlements are, the repugnance of the Indians for the regulations of the missions, insalubrity of climate, bad nourishment, want of care in the diseases of children, and the guilty practice of preventing pregnancy by the use of deleterious herbs. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... Oviedo, "there were so many mosquitoes that they alone were enough to depopulate it, and the people passed to Aguada, which is said to be to the west-nor'-west, on the borders of the river Culebrinas, in the district now known as Aguada and Aguadilla; to this new settlement they gave the name Sotomayor, and while they were there the Indians rose in rebellion one Friday ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... that this adjustment of the constitution of man, both to the differences of climate and to the changes of the seasons, is a very wise and beneficent arrangement of Divine Providence. To confine man absolutely either to animal or vegetable food would be to depopulate a large part of ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... outrages of the injustice it has heaped on their devoted heads: injustice, by reducing indigence to despair, obliges it to seek in crime, resources, against its misery. An unjust government, produces discouragement in the soul: its vexations depopulate a country; under its influence, the earth remains without culture; from thence is bred frightful famine, which gives birth to contagion and plague. The misery of a people produce revolutions; soured by misfortunes, their minds get into a state of fermentation; the overthrow of an empire, is ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... rid of them you'd have to depopulate the country," said Jason Jones. "It is no laughing matter, young woman, and—my daughter ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... you have acted much the best and wisest part; for certainly it is more consonant to all the principles of reason and religion, natural and revealed, to replenish the earth with inhabitants than to depopulate it by killing those already in existence. Besides, it is time for the age of knight-errantry and mad heroism to be at an end. Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, do not care, I suppose, how many seeds of war are sown; but for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... that there is no rigor, nor cruelty, however great, which you are not to expect by laying waste, starvation, and the sword, in such manner that nowhere shall remain a relic of that which at present exists, but his Majesty will strip bare and utterly depopulate the land, and cause it to be inhabited again by strangers; since otherwise his Majesty could not believe that the will of God and of his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... mention. If asked the question, it would be found that I should not myself deny the fact of being at war with their whole order. What was the meaning of that? What was it to which war pledged a man? It pledged him, in case of opportunity, to burn, ravage, and depopulate the houses and lands of the enemy; which enemy was these fair girls. The warrior stood committed to universal destruction. Neither sex nor age, neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray hairs of the venerable patriarch, neither the sanctity of the matron nor the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... is this? Why is it that the one hundred and twenty thousand black voters of South Carolina allow the eighty thousand white voters of that State to grind the life out of them by laws more odious, more infamous, more tyrannical and subversive of manhood than any which depopulate the governments of the old world? Is it because the white man is the created viceregent of government? The Scriptures affirm that all are sprung from one parental stem. Is it because he is the constitutionally ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... sooner," said the bigoted king—and his words were hallowed by the enthusiasm of the Church—"depopulate my kingdom than suffer it to harbour a single infidel." The Duke de Lerma entered into the scheme that lost to Spain many of her most valuable subjects, with the zeal of a pious Catholic expectant of the Cardinal's hat, which he afterwards obtained. But ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... lose the nation, and the nation cannot afford to lose them. To hang or exile them, and depopulate and suffer to run to waste the lands they had cultivated, were sad thrift, sadder than that of deporting four millions of negroes and colored men. To exchange only those excepted from amnesty and pardon by President Johnson, embracing some two millions ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... building for the passage of the pigeons, but which can be closed at convenience. A platform ought to be laid at the entrance for the pigeons to perch upon, with some kind of defence against strange cats, which will frequently depopulate a whole dovecot. Yet, although cats are dangerous neighbours for the birds, they are necessary to defend them from the approach of rats and mice, which will not only suck the eggs, but destroy the birds. The platform should be painted white, and renewed as the paint wears off, white being ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... most kittle cattle. They will exterminate your tribe with machine-guns, gin, small-pox, and still nastier things, but they are fearfully shocked at a bit of killing on the part of others. They call it murder. And though they will well-nigh depopulate a country themselves, they will wax highly indignant if any of the survivors do a little slaying, even if they kill but a miserable slave, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... and the slave trade were based on a purely economic motive—the desire for profit. In order to satisfy that desire, the American people helped to depopulate villages,—to devastate, burn, murder and enslave; to wipe out a civilization, and to bring the unwilling objects of their gain-lust thousands of miles across an impassable ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... the morning, seeing that the rival fishermen had started out again to depopulate the lake, and Lub was busy cleaning up around the cabin, Phil took a notion ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone

... one's fingers," said the Cowper Commission in 1887, "the number of Irish estates on which the improvements have been made by the landlord." The Irish landlord class never did a thing for Ireland except to drain her of her life-blood—to rob and depopulate and destroy, to make exaction after exaction upon the industry of her peasants, until their wrongs cried aloud for redress, if not for vengeance. In England it was estimated in 1897 that the landlord class had spent in investments in landlord property a sum estimated at L700,000,000. These ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... depends upon a man being stronger than his fellows, and is only made possible by shoving and hectoring, and bullying the weak. The preaching of this violent gospel has done us already grievous harm; it is this which has tended to depopulate country districts, to make people averse to discharging all honest subordinate tasks, to make men and women overvalue excitement and amusement. The result of it is the lowest kind of democratic sentiment, which says, "Every one is as good as every one else, and I am a little better," and the jealous ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... stationed with the brigade at Cawnpore, Futtyghur, Darunghur, and Furruckabad, and other places, write purwannahs, and give positive orders to the aumils of these places, respecting the grain, &c.; from which conduct the country will become depopulate. I am hopeful from your friendship that you will write to all these gentlemen not to issue orders, &c., to the aumils, and not to send troops into the mahals of the sircar; and for whatever quantity of grain, &c., they may want, they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... another parish. To move heaven and earth if any dispute happen about a settlement; and, in that particular, to invert the general rule, and stick at no expense. To pull down cottages: to drive out as many inhabitants, and admit as few, as they possibly can; that is, to depopulate the parish, in order to lessen the poor's-rate. To be generous, indeed, sometimes, in giving a portion with the mother of a bastard child to the reputed father, on condition that he will marry her, or with a poor widow, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... shall order that no Indian be sold outside the island, representing to them how cruel it is to sell the men of their own land, and that by such an act they offend God and depopulate the land. ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... but they are moderately fat, and furnish, at least, estimable food. We were very satisfied with the results of the hunt. Happy Ned proposed to return to this enchanting island the next day, for he wished to depopulate it of all the eatable quadrupeds. But he had ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... scaffold—over the bleeding bodies of its defenders which they pile against its path, it sweeps on with a noiseless but unceasing march. Do they levy armies against it, it presents to them no palpable object to oppose. Its camp is the universe; its asylum is the bosoms of their own soldiers. Let them depopulate, destroy as they please, to each extremity of the earth; but as long as they have a single supporter themselves—as long as they leave a single individual into whom that spirit can enter—so long they will have the same ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... reason for hope that that can be left alone to achieve itself. It is claimed that the traffic will depopulate its sources of supply within the next twenty or thirty years. Queensland is a very healthy place for white people—death-rate 12 in 1,000 of the population —but the Kanaka death-rate is away above that. The vital statistics for 1893 place it at 52; for 1894 (Mackay district), 68. The first six ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in the form of a square enclosing a large area. Some of their houses were of logs, some of bark, some of reeds filled in with clay. Boone says that the Indians concentrated their utmost force and vengeance upon this expedition, hoping to destroy the settlements and to depopulate the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... army was landed in the Morea, and met with rapid successes of such a nature as to arouse a suspicion that it was the fixed policy of its commander, Ibrahim, the adopted son of Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, to depopulate the Morea. His advance upon Nauplia was checked by an order of the British commodore, Hamilton, and he retired towards Tripolitza and Navarino. The Turkish successes induced Canning to make proposals to Russia through Sir ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... knowledge is only of things present, quickly sublimed with the deft[253] file of time: whereas the tongue is able to recount things past, and often pronounce things to come, by this means re-edifying such excellences as time and age do easily depopulate. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... exchange for the provisions which you require.... On a good soil, if you are short of inhabitants, give all your attention to agriculture, which multiplies men, and banish the arts, which only serve to depopulate the country.... Pay attention to extensive and convenient coasts. Cover the sea with vessels, and you will have a brilliant and short existence. If your seas wash only inaccessible rocks, let the people be barbarous, and eat fish; they will live more quietly, ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... early expert in the martial toil, In sable ships they left their native soil, To avenge Atrides: now, untimely slain, They fell with glory on the Phrygian plain. So two young mountain lions, nursed with blood In deep recesses of the gloomy wood, Rush fearless to the plains, and uncontroll'd Depopulate the stalls and waste the fold: Till pierced at distance from their native den, O'erpowered they fall beneath the force of men. Prostrate on earth their beauteous bodies lay, Like mountain firs, as tall and straight as they. Great Menelaus views with pitying eyes, Lifts his bright lance, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... has just occurred to me that we are both foolish—honestly, we are!" he said. "The idea when Arizona is so sparsely settled of our starting out to depopulate it in such a premeditated manner on such a beautiful morning, and all because I was such an inept whistler! Why, if I had realized what a perfectly bad whistler I was I would never have whistled again. If my whistle hurt your feelings I ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... any the happier for it, yet wring from the tiller of the soil the very fruits that his arms have won from it. Injustice, by reducing indigence to despair, drives it to seek in crime resources against the woes of life. An iniquitous government breeds despair in men's souls; its vexations depopulate the land, the fields remain untilled, famine, contagion, and pestilence stalk over the earth. Then, embittered by misery, men's minds begin to ferment and effervesce, and what inevitably follows is the overthrow of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... massacre Of every thing that grew, And the well-stored Egyptian year Began to clothe her fields and trees anew; When, lo! a scorching wind from the burnt countries blew, And endless legions with it drew Of greedy locusts, who, where'er With sounding wings they flew, Left all the earth depopulate and bare, As if Winter itself had marched by there, Whate'er the sun and Nile Gave with large bounty to the thankful soil, The wretched pillagers bore away, And the whole Summer was their prey; Till Moses with a prayer, Breathed forth a violent western wind, Which all these living clouds ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... common in this region, and the knowledge of it made our hopes beat high for the success of a peaceful Mission on the shores of the Lake. The rate, however, in which the people here will perish by the next famine, or be exported by Juma and others, will, we fear, depopulate those parts which we have just described as crowded with people. Hunger will ere long compel them to sell each other. An intelligent man complained to us of the Arabs often seizing slaves, to whom they took a fancy, without the formality of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone



Words linked to "Depopulate" :   desolate, depopulation, shrink, reduce



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