The Collaborative International Dictionary
Propagate \Prop"a*gate\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Propagated; p. pr. & vb. n. Propagating.] [L. propagatus, p. p. of propagare to propagate, akin to propages, propago, a layer of a plant, slip, shoot. See Pro-, and cf. Pact, Prop, Prune, v. t.]
To cause to continue or multiply by generation, or successive production; -- applied to animals and plants; as, to propagate a breed of horses or sheep; to propagate a species of fruit tree.
To cause to spread to extend; to impel or continue forward in space; as, to propagate sound or light.
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To spread from person to person; to extend the knowledge of; to originate and spread; to carry from place to place; to disseminate; as, to propagate a story or report; to propagate the Christian religion.
The infection was propagated insensibly.
--De Foe. -
To multiply; to increase. [Obs.]
Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, Which thou wilt propagate.
--Shak. -
To generate; to produce.
Motion propagated motion, and life threw off life.
--De Quincey.Syn: To multiply; continue; increase; spread; diffuse; disseminate; promote.
Wiktionary
vb. (en-past of: propagate)
Usage examples of "propagated".
It appears to have been the current calumny eagerly adopted and propagated by the exasperated Pagan party.
He artfully propagated the rumors and opinions the most favorable to his interest.
If such an institution, which gave the people an interest in their own government, had been universally established by Trajan or the Antonines, the seeds of public wisdom and virtue might have been cherished and propagated in the empire of Rome.
By such prevailing arguments, the absurd and cruel practice of judicial duels, which had been peculiar to some tribes of Germany, was propagated and established in all the monarchies of Europe, from Sicily to the Baltic.
That they have been propagated from the original stock of Adam, who contained in himself the mental as well as the corporeal seed of his posterity.
Before the end of the sixth century, these images, made without hands, (in Greek it is a single word, ^11) were propagated in the camps and cities of the Eastern empire: ^12 they were the objects of worship, and the instruments of miracles.
Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The conspiracy was propagated by national hatred, the firmest band of association and secrecy: the Greeks were impatient to sheathe their daggers in the breasts of the victorious strangers.
Sallust’s brief sum and sketch of this period may be read in his own history, in which he shows how the profligate manners which were propagated by prosperity resulted at last even in civil wars.
Could the kingdom of men then be propagated and increased by the king of the gods?
But we do not greatly wonder that persons, who suppose that some evil nature has been generated and propagated by a kind of opposing principle proper to it, refuse to admit that the cause of the creation was this, that the good God produced a good creation.
Consequently all nations, being propagated from that one stock, have so strong an instinct to cover the shameful parts, that some barbarians do not uncover them even in the bath, but wash with their drawers on.
The design of that writer (who in this matter was the instrument of the Holy Ghost) was to descend to Abraham through the successions of ascertained generations propagated from one man, and then to pass from Abraham’s seed to the people of God, in whom, separated as they were from other nations, was prefigured and predicted all that relates to the city whose reign is eternal, and to its king and founder Christ, which things were foreseen in the Spirit as destined to come.
Wherefore I think it not immaterial to observe that in those generations which are propagated from him who is called Seth, although daughters as well as sons are said to have been begotten, no woman is expressly registered by name.
But if men caught them and took them across with themselves, and thus propagated these breeds in their new abodes, this would not imply an incredible fondness for the chase.