depopulate

verb

make devoid of inhabitants

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /diːˈpɒpjəleɪt/ / /diˈpɑpjəleɪt/

adj

Etymology: First attested in 1531; borrowed from Latin dēpopulātus, perfect active participle of dēpopulor (see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and -ate (adjective-forming suffix)). Compare depeople, French dépeupler, Italian spopolare, Spanish despoblar, Portuguese despovoar and Romanian despopora; by surface analysis, de- + populate. Participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English.

Depopulated (sense 1).
“And ſo in that realme were continually two kynges, vntil the kynge of Mede had depopulate the country, and brought the people in captiuite to the citie of Babylon: […]”
Barren, devoid of inhabitants; utterly destroyed, devastated .
“A world it was to see […] his daily peregrinacion in the desert, felles and craggy mountains of that bareine vnfertile and depopulate countrey.”
“Wroth for bright-cheekt Bryseis losse; whom from Lyrnessus spoiles, (His owne exploit) he brought away, as trophee of his toiles, When that town was depopulate;”

verb

To reduce the population of a region by disease, war, forced relocation etc.
“Where is this viper That would depopulate the city and Be every man himself?”
“So two young Mountain Lions, nurs’d with Blood In deep Recesses of the gloomy Wood, Rush fearless to the Plains, and uncontroul’d Depopulate the Stalls and waste the Fold;”
To remove the components from a circuit board.
To become depopulated, to lose its population.
“[…] the country […] has been rapidly depopulating, and utterly draining of its vital resources, till the unhappy population have sunk to the lowest depth of misery.”
“[…] on the 2d of December our Henry Sixth made his Joyous Entry dismally enough into disaffected and depopulating Paris.”