colonize

present singular third person colonizes · participle present colonizing · participle past colonized · past colonized · alternative colonise

1. transitiveTo settle (a place) with colonists, and hence make (a place) into a colony.

   When you are colonized by dangerous bacteria their presence in your body does no damage. You become a reservoir for those little stinkers.

   2011, Steven Z. Kussin, Doctor, Your Patient Will See You Now, page 241

2. transitiveTo settle among and establish control over (the indigenous people of an area).

   The administration finally sent a naval vessel to return the 368 survivors to the United States in 1864. This ended official efforts to colonize blacks.

   1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford, published 2003, page 509

3. intransitiveTo begin a colony or colonies.
4. broadlytransitivehuman sciencesTo intrude into and take over (the autonomy, experience, social movement, etc, of a less powerful person or group); to commandeer or appropriate.

   To have our grief colonized to facilitate a racist political agenda was beyond offensive.

   2017 June 13, One Year After Pulse, Don't You Dare Come for Any of Us (Lambda Legal)

   4 more examples

   What disservice would be done if issues regarding sexualities in organisations were side-lined by a heteronormative impetus to colonise queer theory?

   2011, Key Concepts in Critical Management Studies, →ISBN

   For slavery aimed not only to colonize black women's bodies, sex, and sexuality, to undermine her, it sought to subvert and destroy any authentic relationship between black women and black men as well as among black women themselves.

   2015, Kwok Pui-Lan, Laura E. Donaldson, Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, →ISBN

   […] suggesting that organisational discourses of heteronormativity cannot fully colonise gay sexualities and genders.

   2016, Nick Rumens, Queer Company: The Role and Meaning of Friendship in Gay Men's Work, →ISBN

   The burden of judgment imposed by the politics of respectability can easily colonize black minds.

   2017, Christopher J. Lebron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea, →ISBN