pullulate, v.
(ˈpʌljʊleɪt)
Also 7 -at.
[f. L. pullulāt-, ppl. stem of pullulāre to sprout out, spring forth, spread, grow, increase, f. pullul-us, dim. of pullus young of any animal, chick.]
1. intr. a. Of a growing part, shoot, or bud: To come forth, sprout out, bud.
| 1619 H. Hutton Follies Anat. (Percy Soc.) 50 Yet they, more urgent, whiles he would conceale, Like Hydra's heads did pullulate, renew. 1774 Goldsm. Nat. Hist. I. 253 Beneath the bark of a tree they pullulate into branches. 1842 Blackw. Mag. LI. 723 Others whose pinions are but just beginning to pullulate. 1872 T. Hincks in Pop. Sci. Rev. XI. 339 The sexual buds of the zoophyte..sometimes..pullulate from a portion of the common substance. |
b. Of a seed: To sprout, to germinate. Of a plant or animal: To send out shoots or buds, to propagate itself by budding; to breed, to multiply: now usually with the connotation of rapid increase.
| 1621 T. Granger Exp. Eccles. vii. 12. 175 The swellings and diseases of the body, whose root remaineth still within, and pullulateth againe after the same, or some other manner. 1657 W. Morice Coena quasi κοινὴ xi. 130 Seed doth not pullulate but after some little time. 1891 Du Maurier P. Ibbetson 14 Those rampant, many-footed things that pullulate in damp and darkness under big flat stones. |
c. Path. To put forth morbid growths.
| 1775 Nourse in Phil. Trans. LXVI. 438 The surface of the intestines..began to pullulate, throwing up small grains of flesh from every point. |
2. intr. transf. and fig. a. To be developed or produced as offspring, to spring up abundantly.
| 1657 Fitz-Brian Gd. Old Cause dress'd in prim. Lustre (1659) 6 Superstition..would in time have pullulated, and budded forth afresh. 1714 Mandeville Fab. Bees (1733) I. 89 [They] may..see good spring up and pullulate from evil, as naturally as chickens do from eggs. 1890 Times 6 Oct., One of those lower forms of Christianity which pullulate so freely in the religious soil of the United States. |
b. intr. To teem, to swarm.
| 1835 Southey Doctor xc. III. 153 The Egyptian mind seems always to have pullulated with superstition. 1883 W. H. Russell in 19th Cent. Sept. 490 As to the beggars, they pullulate in the place. |
Hence ˈpullulating ppl. a., budding, sprouting.
| 1738 Warburton Div. Legat. ii. vi. I. 277 Religious liberty which would have stifled this pullulating Evil in the Seed. 1819 G. S. Faber Dispensations (1823) I. 384 In our own evil days of rankly pullulating heresy and blasphemy. 1822–34 Good's Study Med. (ed. 4) I. 183 In the fresh pullulating grains of the glume. |