Definition

1. Verb:
   • To reduce the number of people living in a place: To cause a significant decrease in the population of a city, region, or country.

Usage

• The verb "depopulate" is typically used in a formal or historical context to describe a severe reduction in population, often due to a specific cause like war, disease, famine, or forced migration. It is a transitive verb, meaning it requires a direct object (the place that loses its population).
• It often describes a process or event that leaves an area with far fewer inhabitants than before.

Examples

• Verb:
  • The plague depopulated vast areas of Europe in the 14th century.
  • The long war threatened to depopulate the entire region.
  • Economic collapse and mass emigration have depopulated many rural towns.

Advanced Usage

• "Depopulated" (Adjective): Used to describe an area that has lost most of its population.
  • We drove through depopulated villages abandoned after the disaster.
• Concept of "Depopulation" (Noun): The process or fact of a place becoming depopulated.
  • The depopulation of the countryside is a major concern for the government.

Variants and Related Words

• Depopulation (n): The act or process of reducing a population.
• Depopulated (adj): Describing an area that has undergone depopulation.

Synonyms

• Devastate (in the specific sense of laying waste to a place, making it empty).
• Desolate (to make barren or empty of inhabitants).
• Empty (to make a place have fewer or no people).

Antonyms

• Populate: To furnish with inhabitants.
• Settle: To establish people in a place.
• Repopulate: To populate again.

Verb

1. reduce in population
   • The epidemic depopulated the countryside