unpeople means to deprive of inhabitants; to depopulate.
Why “unpeople” is a great word
To render a place desolate by stripping it of its human inhabitants. Formed within English by derivation from the prefix un- (expressing reversal or deprivation) and the noun people, first recorded in 1525–35. Unlike "depopulate" (a general term for population reduction) or "evacuate" (which implies a protective removal), to unpeople speaks to the achieved, absolute vacancy, often born of force or catastrophe. It is the scorched village with doorways gaping like missing teeth, the city after plague where curtains still stir but no breath moves them, and the echoing canyon where a dam's waters rose—the particular violence not of death alone, but of the subtraction of presence itself, leaving landscape to outlast its witnesses.
Etymology
From un- + people.
verb
- To deprive of inhabitants; to depopulate.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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