expatriation
1 CulturalExplanation
Expatriation is the process of leaving your country and living in a new one, or the act of forcing a person to do this. If you decide to pack up your things and move to the remote island nation of Kiribati, that's expatriation. When a fairy tale king banishes a princess from the kingdom, it's one kind of expatriation—you could also call it "exile" or "deportation." Then there's the expatriation that happens when someone chooses to move from one country to another. A U.S. citizen might attend college in Canada, then stay and become a Canadian citizen afterward, for example. Expatriation comes from the French expatrier, "banish," from ex-, "out of," and the Latin patria, "native land."
Vocabulary lists containing expatriation
Not Your Father's Word List: Pater, Patr
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Citizenship and Civil Rights
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U.S. Government - Middle School and High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He’d sought answers to his country’s racial problems through scholarship, sociology, pan-Africanism, Afrofuturism, sci-fi, Socialism, Communism and finally expatriation, to Ghana, a new nation with a new president, Du Bois ally Kwame Nkrumah.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 14, 2026
The Court was clear: Except in very rare cases, denaturalization and expatriation were taken off the table.
From Salon • Apr. 26, 2026
These expatriation figures don’t reflect migration but merely show the number of Americans living abroad who have effectively decided to give up any plan to move back to the U.S.A.
From MarketWatch • Oct. 18, 2025
He hired a law firm to help him with his expatriation process and prepare his tax returns, along with an appraiser to value his companies.
From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 15, 2025
In various matters, about that time, I had acted wrong; and I felt that a voluntary expatriation was a good atonement.
From The Gipsy (Vols I & II) A Tale by James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
