Populated

How to spell populated

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce populated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does populated mean?

1. adjectiveFilled or inhabited by people, or filled in with data or content.

Populated in a sentence

• The coastal towns are densely populated during the summer months.

• The remote valley is sparsely populated and rarely visited.

Where does populated come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin noun populus, meaning 'the people' or 'a community', the same root that gives us 'popular', 'population', and 'public'. From populus came the late Latin verb populare and its participle populatus, used to describe the act of filling a place with inhabitants. English adopted 'populate' in the late 1500s, and 'populated' followed naturally as its past tense and participle form. Curiously, the related Latin verb could also mean 'to lay waste' or 'to ravage', which is why the old English word 'depopulate' carries a sense of emptying out, the exact opposite of filling. The single p in the middle and the unstressed 'u' that softens to a faint 'yuh' sound are the parts writers most often second-guess.

How the word is built

• popul- (from Latin populus: people)
• -ate (verb-forming suffix)
• -ed (past tense/participle)