proliferation

Noun

proliferation (countable and uncountable, plural proliferations)

1. (uncountable) The process by which an organism produces others of its kind; breeding, propagation, procreation, reproduction.
2. (countable) The act of increasing, rising, or proliferating; augmentation, amplification, enlargement, escalation, aggrandizement.
   • One particularly damaging, but often ignored, effect of conflict on education is the proliferation of attacks on schools[…]as children, teachers or school buildings become the targets of attacks. Parents fear sending their children to school. Girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.2013 July 19, Mark Tran, “Denied an education by war”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 1
   • But unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow.2020 April 3, Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal”, in Financial Times, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC
   1. (uncountable) In particular, the spread (proliferating) of biochemical, nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction to countries not originally involved in developing them.
      • ... to combat proliferation by assisting them in gaining and assuring greater control over their dual-use equipment and technology. States that gain weapons of mass destruction are able to pose a significant military threat to the[…]1997 11, William J. Perry, Proliferation: Threat and Response, DIANE Publishing, →ISBN, page 47
      • [Efforts] to fight proliferation will require more than just new targets for collection; intelligence analysis will also have to change. In particular, to support policymakers looking for opportunities to disrupt, slow, or stop a[…]1996, Air University (U.S.). Press, Fighting Proliferation: New Concerns for the Nineties
3. (countable) The result of building up; buildup, accretion.