depopulate
dee pop yuh layt
- v reduce in population
The epidemic depopulated the countryside
- Shakespeare used it in Coriolanus when he had the tribune Sicinius ask, "Where is this viper That would depopulate the city?" John Milton's History of England referred to .
- If Professor Smyth's estimate was right, each pile has been producing, every day for more than a year, enough radioactive poisons to depopulate many "large areas.
- In the current conflict, they've used similar tactics to depopulate much of eastern Kosovo in a bid to flush out the Kosovo Liberation Army.