self-colonise

verb

To regain power after being colonized.

Meanings

verbself-colonise (third-person singular simple present self-colonises, present participle self-colonising, simple past and past participle self-colonised)

present singular third person self-colonises · participle present self-colonising · participle past self-colonised · past self-colonised

  1. Alternative form of self-colonize.
    1. To regain power after being colonized.

      They did not apologise for being Asian; in other words, they did not seem to be self-colonised.

      2016, Le-Ha Phan, Transnational Education Crossing ‘Asia’ and ‘the West’, →ISBN
      2 more examples

      Yet ironically, in the thirty five odd years of Bangladesh's existence, it has remained seized or self-colonised for a long 16 years' period (1975-1990) by military-autocratic and nearly autocratic regimes.

      2011, Ridwanul Hoque, Judicial Activism in Bangladesh: A Golden Mean Approach, →ISBN, page 95

      And it is imposed on us by the same Ngarrindjeri who themselves were once the colonised. The processes of colonialism in the end become self-colonising.

      2014, Irene Watson, Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism and International Law: Raw Law, →ISBN
    2. To be introduced into an ecosystem via natural processes.

      The original idea was to allow the roofs to self-colonise with plants, but they are sometimes seeded to increase their bio-diversity potential in the short term.

      2015, Douglas Waterford, 21st Century Homestead: Urban Agriculture, →ISBN, page 99
      2 more examples

      Elsewhere in the capital, new shoots are pushing up through the soil on a 460sq m (5,000sq ft) biodiverse green roof at Laban Dance Centre, in southeast London, where the roof has been left to self-colonise with a mixture of seed.

      2004, The Garden - Volume 129, page 670

      The presence of suitable rodent prey introduced by people presumably at or near colonisation about 3000 years ago (Anderson and Clark, 1999; White et al. 2000) was probably the prerequisite that allowed barn owls, which are specialist predators of small mammals and specifically rodents, to self-colonise, presumably from the Solomon Islands.

      2009, Geoffrey Richard Clark, Atholl Anderson, The Early Prehistory of Fiji, →ISBN, page 43
Cite this entry
APA

self-colonise. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/self-colonise

MLA

“self-colonise.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/self-colonise. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “self-colonise,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/self-colonise.

Source: self-colonise on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.