Colonises

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To take control of a region previously uninhabited or occupied, establishing settlements that often lead to the displacement of the original inhabitants and appropriation of local resources
2. The process of establishing a presence in a new territory, which involves both settling and exerting authority, frequently resulting in the marginalization of existing communities
3. To establish settlements in a new area, often exerting control over it and its original inhabitants

Etymology: "Colonises" is the third-person singular present form of "colonise", the British spelling of "colonize". The verb is the one that carries the history: it comes from "colony", which derives from Latin "colonia", a settlement of farmers and veterans planted in conquered or newly acquired land, and from "colonus", a tiller of the soil. The root sense is therefore agricultural, a matter of cultivating ground and settling people on it, and that practical meaning of planting a community in a new place is what the verb still carries. The modern sense of taking control of territory and its resources grew out of that settlement-building idea.

Synonyms: settles, inhabits, occupies, establishes, claims

Antonyms: decolonizes