replenish
- 01 C2 Proficiency
to fill a space or a place completely with people or things.
to fill up or occupy a space fully. This sense is largely restricted to formal or biblical contexts in modern English.
Simple“The travelers were told to go forth and replenish the new land.”
In context“The ancient decree commanded the settlers to replenish the earth, establishing communities across the fertile plains.”
UsageIn modern contexts, this sense is almost exclusively found in quotations or religious texts.
Teacher's tipLearners will likely only encounter this sense in the phrase 'replenish the earth' from the Bible; in all other cases, they should use 'populate'populate' or 'fill'.
“Before addressing that question, however, they first needed to determine whether immune cells from the blood truly could replenish microglia in the brain.”
“Farmers searched for new ways to replenish depleted fields as they struggled to feed rapidly growing populations.”
From Middle English replenisshen, borrowed from Old French repleniss-, stem of some of the conjugated forms of replenir, from re- + plenir, from plein, from Latin plenus.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.