The origins of propagate are firmly rooted in the field of horticulture. The word is a 16th century Latin borrowing, ultimately from the verb propagare, which means "to set (onto a plant) a small shoot or twig cut for planting or grafting." The word's meaning quickly extended from the realm of the farm and field to less material kinds of reproduction, such as the spreading of ideas and beliefs. The similarity between propagate and propaganda is not coincidental; that word also comes to us from propagare, although it took a more circuitous route.
We are discovering new ways to propagate plants without seeds. He propagated the apple tree by grafting. The plants failed to propagate.
Recent Examples on the WebThe center is working to mitigate some of these concerns by tagging their mussels so as not to propagate animals with the same genetics in a subsequent season. Katherine Rapin, WIRED, 27 Aug. 2022 Mathur and others also argued that the new work implies a nonlocal effect—one that does not propagate through space but jumps from one place to another—to extract information from the black hole. George Musser, Scientific American, 17 Aug. 2022 In this way, billions upon billions upon billions of signals independently and simultaneously propagate through the entire brain across the massive network of 85 billion neurons. Gabriel A. Silva, Forbes, 2 Aug. 2022 If my rental car tree happened to be an American beech, and if it were allowed to mature and propagate an old-growth forest in the Upper Midwest, then future forests could replicate the processes that stored carbon for thousands of years. Jason Mclachlan, The Conversation, 27 July 2022 To propagate them in pots, trim your herbs leaving three nodes with foliage on it and three nodes without leaves. Deanna Kizis, Sunset Magazine, 18 Aug. 2022 Scheduled during a programming lull in the summer, the presentations have enjoyed robust media coverage, and the spread over multiple weeks has allowed the revelations and stories to propagate and sink in. Inkoo Kang, Washington Post, 23 June 2022 In any nuclear reactor, the purpose is to maintain a nuclear fission chain reaction in the fuel that generates heat and also additional neutrons, which are used to propagate the chain reaction. Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, 4 Mar. 2022 The initial push in the late 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in populations that now propagate in the wild. Wes Siler, Outside Online, 1 Apr. 2021 See More
Word History
Etymology
Latin propagatus, past participle of propagare to set slips, propagate, from propages slip, offspring, from pro- before + pangere to fasten — more at pro-, pact