proliferation
noun
Simple meaning
The process by which an organism produces others of its kind.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
prohlihferayshuhnSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pɹoʊlɪfɚˈeɪʃən
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
uncountable
The process by which an organism produces others of its kind; breeding, propagation, procreation, reproduction.
countable
The act of increasing, rising, or proliferating; augmentation, amplification, enlargement, escalation, aggrandizement.
uncountable
In paticular, the spread (proliferating) of biochemical, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to countries not originally involved in developing them.
countable
The result of building up; buildup, accretion.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The process by which an organism produces others of its kind; breeding, propagation, procreation, reproduction.
Used this way, proliferation is a specialist word with a clearly warm, approving pull. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Kind and considerate
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use proliferation
- “The rapid proliferation of weeds made gardening difficult.”
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.