- 1
To depopulate a place is to greatly reduce the number of people living there, so the area becomes much emptier. War, famine, disease, a factory closing, or a long flight of young people to the city can depopulate a town or a countryside. It is a strong word: not “a few families moved”, but a place left with far fewer lives in it. Writers use it in history, news, and reports. Though actually, English uses it two ways. Someone or something can depopulate a region (an army, a plague). A place can also be said to depopulate as people leave on their own. It does not have to mean that people were killed — they may simply have gone — but in war reporting the human cost is often in the background. An older, rarer cousin is depeople; populate is the everyday opposite direction.
使人口銳減、使地方變得人煙稀少（程度重；不一定是殺害，也可能是遷走、逃難）
組成First attested in 1531; borrowed from Latin dēpopulātus, from dēpopulor. By surface analysis: de- + populate (take the people out of a place that had been populated).
同家族的字
- populatethe opposite direction: fill a place with people
- populationthe people living in a place
- populousfull of people
原始詞典資料5 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
depopulateverb/diːˈpɒpjəleɪt/
- 1
To reduce the population of a region by disease, war, forced relocation etc.
- Where is this viper That would depopulate the city and Be every man himself?
- So two young Mountain Lions, nurs’d with Blood In deep Recesses of the gloomy Wood, Rush fearless to the Plains, and uncontroul’d Depopulate the Stalls and waste the Fold;
- 2
businesselectrical-engineeringelectricityTo remove the components from a circuit board.
- 3
To become depopulated, to lose its population.
- […] the country […] has been rapidly depopulating, and utterly draining of its vital resources, till the unhappy population have sunk to the lowest depth of misery.
- […] on the 2d of December our Henry Sixth made his Joyous Entry dismally enough into disaffected and depopulating Paris.
depopulateadj/diːˈpɒpjəleɪt/
- 1
obsoleteDepopulated (sense 1).
- And ſo in that realme were continually two kynges, vntil the kynge of Mede had depopulate the country, and brought the people in captiuite to the citie of Babylon: […]
- 2
obsoleteBarren, devoid of inhabitants; utterly destroyed, devastated .
- A world it was to see […] his daily peregrinacion in the desert, felles and craggy mountains of that bareine vnfertile and depopulate countrey.
- Wroth for bright-cheekt Bryseis losse; whom from Lyrnessus spoiles, (His owne exploit) he brought away, as trophee of his toiles, When that town was depopulate;
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。