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pullulate
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pullulate

Pullulate \Pul"lu*late\, v. i. [L. pullulatus, p. p. of pullulare to sprout, from pullulus a young animal, a sprout, dim. of pullus. See pullet.] To germinate; to bud; to multiply abundantly.
--Warburton.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
pullulate

1610s, from Latin pullulatus, past participle of pullulare "put forth, grow, sprout, shoot up, come forth," from pullulus, diminutive of pullus "young animal" (see foal (n.)). Related: Pullulated; pullulating.\n

Wiktionary
pullulate

vb. 1 To rapidly multiply. 2 To germinate. 3 To teem with; to be filled with.

WordNet
pullulate
  1. v. be teeming, be abuzz; "The garden was swarming with bees"; "The plaza is teeming with undercover policemen"; "her mind pullulated with worries" [syn: teem, swarm]

  2. move in large numbers; "people were pouring out of the theater"; "beggars pullulated in the plaza" [syn: pour, swarm, stream, teem]

  3. produce buds, branches, or germinate; "the potatoes sprouted" [syn: shoot, spud, germinate, bourgeon, burgeon forth, sprout]

  4. become abundant; increase rapidly

  5. breed freely and abundantly

Usage examples of "pullulate".

If Councillors detrain, demons pullulate about their feet, eating the echoes of their steps.

This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist A pulse that no two doctors have as yet Counted and found the same, and in his mouth A tongue that has the like alacrity For saying or not for saying what most it is That pullulates in his ignoble mind.

Certainly the case is not proven: like every other nuclear ramification, it pullulates with uncertainty.

On the roadbed there is a man whose front pullulates with scrawny arms, each from a corpse or an amputation.

The two officers sat in the stern sheets of the gig, staring at the myriad gray jellyfish which pullulated under the shining surface of the lagoon.

Records attesting to his death were pullulating like insect eggs and verifying each other beyond all contention.

The myriads, the hordes of human beings crawling and pullulating like bacteria across the face of the planet had never known the lash of one of his land.

Cheapside, trying to keep tabs on the proliferating, the pullulating hydra of Clinch money.

Perhaps before it is over, the outer forces will have mobilized the swarming, pullulating masses of China and India against the body of the Western Civilization.

At any rate he was safely outside the monument, with its pullulating population of midgets creeping over its carpets and lounging insignificant on its couches.

Naked, dripping, he snatched up the aerosol insect spray bomb in the bathroom and forced himself to go back to that pullulating black pile.

Of the noisome pits wherein she had been, of that bournless realm and its pullulating phantoms, she could tell us nothing: her agony had ended with the terrible mercy of complete forgetfulness.

They arose in the dank dawn out of a sleep without rest to quietly assume the previous day's languid positions in the boat, gazing speechlessly like sated connoisseurs upon mile after absolute mile of bursting, shrieking, pullulating redundancy, verdure without beginning or end, the moss-backed primordial crowded up against yesterday's tender birth, the same random elements combined, recombined in a ceaseless round of genesis and collapse.

Around him pullulated the half-skilled, the useless, the uncaught criminals, with sleazy clothes over fish-belly skins.

It's actual disaster, the risk that in two or three generations' time there won't be enough sane folk to make new discoveries, there won't be any news to carry, there won't be any reports to publish, there won't be scholars anymore, but just a pullulating mindless mass, alive enough to breed but not well fed enough to reason and to plan.