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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
proliferate
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
continue
▪ Yet the idea of a post-apocalyptic city captivates the contemporary mind and its images continue to proliferate.
▪ Such cultures retain viability and continue to proliferate for approximately I week but changing the medium may extend this period.
▪ Since then, the work has continued to proliferate.
▪ These broader, qualitative questions must be raised and examined as courses for unemployed people continue to proliferate.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Child pornography is proliferating due to the increased use of computer chat rooms.
▪ Fast-food restaurants have proliferated in the area.
▪ The HIV virus is able to proliferate at an astonishing rate.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ As with the Casket Letters, conflicting theories concerning the event have proliferated ever since.
▪ But unless I am much mistaken, the ingestion of strange materials really is proliferating.
▪ By the 1970s, such names were proliferating.
▪ Fears of mortgage defaults are adding pressure to an already depressed property market, while reports of industry feeling the squeeze proliferated.
▪ The algae consumed waste products from the reef and under the intense artificial sunlight they proliferated in stringy green mats.
▪ Towns proliferate in civilizations: in cultures they remain embryonic.
▪ Yet the idea of a post-apocalyptic city captivates the contemporary mind and its images continue to proliferate.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Proliferate

Proliferate \Pro*lif"er*ate\, v. t. [L. proles offspring + ferre to bear.]

  1. (Biol.) To produce or form cells; especially, to produce cells rapidly.

  2. (Zo["o]l.) To produce zooids by budding.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
proliferate

1857 as a term in biology; see proliferation. General sense from 1961. Related: Proliferated; proliferating.

Wiktionary
proliferate

vb. To increase in number or spread rapidly.

WordNet
proliferate
  1. v. grow rapidly; "Pizza parlors proliferate in this area"

  2. cause to grow or increase rapidly; "We must not proliferate nuclear arms"

Usage examples of "proliferate".

Plague themselves, and most of the thus-sobered or outright terrified folk either returned to the land or took to the woodlands and wastes to live by banditry and poaching of the unhunted and rapidly proliferating game beasts.

Special Channel users proliferated, Albright grew increasingly worried that the necessary close control of the Special Channel would be lost.

This was a seriously important part of town, and although light industry, cornmills and laundries, lurked among the private houses, the neighbourhood lacked the proliferating bars and brothels that clustered around the Marine Gate and the riverfront.

In China, it had already proliferated into a number of abstruse metaphysical sects, within bodi the Hinayana and Mahayana schools, that could scarcely have appealed to the Japanese beyond a small circle of intellectuals at court.

Cancer cells give rise to both normal and cancer cell types when the cancer stem cell, which is maintaining a monoclonal line, is proliferating.

Margaret had several dead proxies collected by a maintenance robot and ordered that the survivors should be regrouped and kept above the deep part of the Rift where the vacuum organisms proliferated.

Margaret had several dead proxies collected by a sample robot and ordered that the survivors should be regrouped and kept above the deep part of the Rift where the vacuum organisms proliferated.

There seems to have been an increase in quality as well as in quantity, too, with well-edited semiprofessional magazines and small press anthologies of generally higher editorial standards than those anthologies issuing from big trade publishers proliferating.

In the same way the use of the mill proliferated to other uses, from beer-making in 861, through tanning in 1138, paper-milling in 1276, to the blast furnace in 1384.

Search Engine applications are used to locate specific information in this impressive, constantly proliferating library.

Condos, apartments, and lofts proliferated, all with views of man-made ponds, and names like Clarkson Green, Cedar Mills, Skyline Terrace, Tivoli.

They would creep irresistibly from the moist craters of the iceteroid impacts, proliferating relentlessly amid the storms and earthquakes of terraformation, surviving the floods as permafrost melted.

The table candles and wall cressets would not be lit for another hour or so, and shadows were proliferating in the corners and under the chairs.

While there are only four dolphin swim attractions in the country, some experts fear they will proliferate because of the money.

Restaurants featuring all types of Italian food proliferated at the turn of the century, virtually everywhere in the United States.