Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use colony in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Colony means a geographical area under the remote control of a country; especially to extract resources or exploit labor from that area. Example: “Much of the eastern United States was formerly a British colony; other areas were French, Spanish, Dutch, or Swedish colonies.”

Examples of colony by meaning

nounA geographical area under the remote control of a country; especially to extract resources or exploit labor from that...

  • Much of the eastern United States was formerly a British colony; other areas were French, Spanish, Dutch, or Swedish colonies.
  • Bermuda is a crown colony of Great Britain.

nounA group of people who settle an area and maintain ties to their country of origin.

  • a colony of British expats in Spain
  • The Amana Colonies in Iowa were settled by people from Germany.
  • The question of ecclesiastical jurisdiction had to be answered before the colony sailed for East Florida.2006, Kenneth H. Beeson Jr., Fromajadas and Indigo: The Minorcan Colony in Florida, Arcadia Publishing, →ISBN

nounA group of people with similar interests, occupations, or characteristics, living in a particular area; the area such...

  • a nudist colony; the statue was put up right in the middle of the artist colony
  • a leper colony on the outskirts of town; most buildings in the penal colony were made of concrete

nounA group of organisms of same or different species living together in close association.

  • ant colony; coral colony
  • a colony of specialized polyps and medusoids
  • colonies of stem cells

nounAn apartment complex or neighborhood.

  • Our colony is quite small, but each apartment is large.

nounA potential new chapter of a fraternity or sorority awaiting official recognition from their headquarters.

  • That weekend in 2013, fraternity members from Baruch, a commuter school in Manhattan whose Pi Delta Psi colony was only about three years old, gathered in a large rental house in Tunkhannock Township, Pa.2018 January 7, Rick Rojas, “A Partial Win for Prosecutors Who Targeted Fraternity After Student’s Death”, in New York Times

More sentences with colony

  • Together, the ant colony was greater than the sum of its parts.From the entry sum of its parts
  • Australia was used as a penal colony by the United Kingdom in the 18th to 19th century.From the entry penal colony
  • These insect and mole-rat colonies are multi-organismic equivalents of single organisms.From the entry multi-organismic
  • The Scoto-Norse originated in Viking colonies established in Scotland and its surrounding islands.From the entry scoto-
  • Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei, being former British colonies, are the only Southeast Asian member countries of the Commonwealth.From the entry commonwealth
  • The priest argued to the king that unless clerics accompanied the colony ship, the colony would soon descend into heathendom and barbarity.From the entry heathendom
  • These bacteria form large, spready colonies.From the entry spready
  • Any time I go to the beehives to take care of the colonies, I wear protective gear.2022, Elsa Wolf, “Bees”, in Keep Me Forever: A Novel, [Wyoming]: ElsaWolfBooks, →ISBN, part 3. From the entry apicultor
  • The Kwantung Territory became the first and last colony of the Russian Empire located outside its borders.2021, “DALNIY — A COMMERCIAL PORT OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE ON THE SHORES OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN”, in cyberleninka.ru, →DOI, archived from the…. From the entry Lyushunkou
  • Nólsoy is home to one of the largest breeding colonies of storm petrels on earth.2020, Tim Ecott, The Land of Maybe, Short Books, published 2021, page 127. From the entry storm petrel
  • These have weakly mineralized skeletons which allow colonies to bend in the currents.2020, Paul D. Taylor, Bryozoan Paleobiology, page 109. From the entry flustriform
  • He said that just angered the yellow jackets, the highly aggressive wasps that live in such colonies.2019 June 30, Mariel Padilla, “Officials Warn of Wasp ‘Super Nests’ in Alabama”, in The New York Times. From the entry yellow jacket
  • Their murderous rampages on bee colonies have earned them the nickname ‘murder hornets’ from entomologists.2017 January 1, “The Asian Giant Hornet, The Bee-Decapitating Hornet That Is The Stuff Of Nightmares”, in All That's Interesting. From the entry murder hornet
  • Among such traits, propensity to inquilinism in termites is known to relate positively to colony size.2016 January 26, “Allometric Scaling of Patrolling Rate and Nest Volume in Constrictotermes cyphergaster Termites: Hints on the Settlement…. From the entry inquilinism
  • In that sense, the overseas colonies are the key to the Greater United States.2016 June 1, Immerwahr, Daniel, “The Greater United States: Territory and Empire in U.S. History”, in Diplomatic History, volume 40…. From the entry Greater United States
  • The colonies in each well were pooled and recultured for characterization and storage.2015 August 29, “Generation of SNCA Cell Models Using Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN) Technology for Efficient High-Throughput Drug Screening”…. From the entry reculture
  • August Engelhardt's most fervent wish, his destiny in fact, was to establish a colony of cocovores.2015, Christian Kracht, translated by Daniel Bowles, Imperium, Picador, published 2016, page 10. From the entry cocovore
  • The English gallants who came to the colony for adventure or to escape punishment were very tender-handed.2014, Alice Morse Earle, Curious Punishments of Bygone Days, →ISBN. From the entry tender-handed
  • The new colony quickly became not only self-sufficient, but began exporting goods.2012, BioWare, Mass Effect 3: From Ashes (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, PC, scene: Planets and Locations: Eden Prime…. From the entry self-sufficient
  • Settlerist principles meant the Australian colonies believed Britain had an obligation to buy colonial wine.2012, Julie McIntyre, First Vintage: Wine in colonial New South Wales, →ISBN. From the entry settlerist
  • A consignment of catfur mittens had been lost in transit to the colony on Tejat III.2011, E.C. Tubb, Stellar Assignment, →ISBN. From the entry catfur
  • And the Maritime colonies were similarly ill-disposed toward a legislative union.2009, Patrick Malcolmson, Richard Myers, The Canadian Regime: An Introduction to Parliamentary Government in Canada, University of Toronto…. From the entry ill-disposed
  • The beacon was a Prothean artifact unearthed on the Alliance colony of Eden Prime.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Protheans: Beacon Codex entry. From the entry quantum leap
  • The krogan homeworld, their colonies, and all occupied worlds were infected.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect (Science Fiction), Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Krogan: Genophage Codex entry. From the entry naive
  • The blunderbuss never gained great favor in the American colonies or early United States.2007, Norm Flayderman, Flayderman's Guide to Antique American Firearms, Gun Digest Books, →ISBN, page 764. From the entry blunderbuss
  • Colonies were established in fertile oases beyond the frontier, to act as supply bases for mobile operations.2006, C J Peers, “Imperial Chinese Armes 200 BC-AD 1260”, in Soldiers of the Dragon: Chinese Armies 1500 BC-AD 1840, Osprey Publishing…. From the entry Lun-t'ai
  • At around the same time, the Dutch introduced coffee to Suriname, a colony in South America.2005, Tom Standage, “7: The Great Soberer”, in A History of the World in 6 Glasses, page 149. From the entry Suriname
  • Queens of socially parasitic inquiline ants reproduce by laying eggs in the colonies of other species.2003, Mary Jane West-Eberhard, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. From the entry inquiline

Meaning of colony

  1. noun A geographical area under the remote control of a country; especially to extract resources or exploit labor from that area.
  2. noun A group of people who settle an area and maintain ties to their country of origin.
  3. noun A group of people with similar interests, occupations, or characteristics, living in a particular area; the area such people occupy.

Full definition of colony

Questions about colony in a sentence

How do you use colony in a sentence?
Colony is used as a noun and verb. For example: “Much of the eastern United States was formerly a British colony; other areas were French, Spanish, Dutch, or Swedish colonies.”
What is a short sentence with colony?
“ant colony; coral colony”
What does colony mean?
Colony means a geographical area under the remote control of a country; especially to extract resources or exploit labor from that area.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: colony (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use colony in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/colony. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.