displace
Americanverb (used with object)
-
displaces,
present (3rd person singular)
-
displaced,
past participle, past
-
displacing
present participle
-
to compel (a person or persons) to leave home, country, etc.
-
to move or put out of the usual or proper place.
- Synonyms:
- relocate
-
to take the place of; replace; supplant.
Fiction displaces fact.
-
to remove from a position, office, or dignity.
-
Obsolete. to rid oneself of.
verb
-
to move from the usual or correct location
-
to remove from office or employment
-
to occupy the place of; replace; supplant
-
to force (someone) to leave home or country, as during a war
-
chem to replace (an atom or group in a chemical compound) by another atom or group
-
physics to cause a displacement of (a quantity of liquid, usually water of a specified type and density)
Synonym Usage
Displace, misplace mean to put something in a different place from where it should be. To displace often means to shift something solid and comparatively immovable, more or less permanently from its place: The flood displaced houses from their foundations. To misplace is to put an object in a wrong place so that it is difficult to find: Papers belonging in the safe were misplaced and temporarily lost.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
displacesimple
-
displacessimple
-
have displacedperfect
-
has displacedperfect
-
am displacingprogressive
-
are displacingprogressive
-
is displacingprogressive
-
have been displacingperfect progressive
-
has been displacingperfect progressive
Past
-
displacedsimple
-
had displacedperfect
-
was displacingprogressive
-
were displacingprogressive
-
had been displacingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of displace
1545–55; dis- 1 + place, perhaps modeled on Middle French desplacer
Explanation
When you displace something, you move it to a new position — either in a concrete sense, like moving a chair, or in an abstract sense, like firing someone from a job. Displace means to forcefully move or remove something — or someone — but it can also mean “to take the place of,” again, with some force. If your brother is sitting in your seat, you might say, “Get out of my chair! Don’t make me have to displace you!” Similarly, when a new employee is hired at work, she might displace the person who had the job before.
Vocabulary lists containing displace
100 SAT Words Beginning with "D"
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
100 Great Words from "Fahrenheit 451" -- Part I Vocabulary
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
"Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began" by Art Spiegelman
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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.
See Examples For:
“Club Kid” “Right now, it’s difficult to think of any film that could displace Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 26, 2026
New research has documented how honey bees chase, displace, and intimidate rival insects, providing the first detailed evidence of how extensively they interfere with other species' access to food.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 22, 2026
As job growth slowed, worries spread that AI would displace entry-level workers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 15, 2026
Hamilton made it through into the final session by only 0.001secs as Audi's Gabriel Bortoleto just failed to displace him, and let out an expletive over the radio when he saw the narrow escape.
From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2026
Rooting herself so deeply on that spot that nothing could displace her.
From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng
In Thursday’s Macro Voices podcast, he noted that if AI displaces workers and reduces their earning power, then the outstanding debt still needs to be serviced.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 30, 2026
According to the researchers, Alzheimer's may begin when a-beta displaces tau from microtubules.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 19, 2026
Buyers should ask themselves if they really need Subaru’s heroic AWD hardware, the cost of which displaces value in other parts of the car.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026
He warns against weakening workers' bargaining power, especially as technology displaces jobs and unemployment remains high.
From BBC ● Nov. 27, 2025
In an early unpublished text from the 1590s he sought to demonstrate that Archimedes’ principle, that a body floats when it displaces its own weight in water, is necessarily true.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
In the 1950s and ’60s, these treatments were displaced by newly approved antipsychotic medications such as Thorazine and Haldol.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 2, 2026
The war, which began in April 2023, has displaced 14 million people.
From BBC ● Oct. 27, 2026
"Why should I be displaced from my house?" he continued.
From Barron's ● Oct. 24, 2026
More than 15 million people have been displaced in the 23 years of fighting, with more than 1.3 million still stranded in teeming refugee camps in eastern Chad.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026
Several boulders were displaced and out of the way.
From "Shipwrecked!" by Martin W. Sandler
By the following morning, the military had cleared out the residents of the assailants' neighbourhood, displacing more than 3,000 people, according to the municipality.
From Barron's ● Nov. 2, 2026
The firm says that displacing imported liquified nature gas from the United States with gas from the Jackdaw field would save the equivalent of four million tonnes of CO2.
From BBC ● Oct. 21, 2026
This pattern raises the possibility that the wasps are displacing the ants completely, although the researchers say experiments would be necessary to confirm whether that is actually happening.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 6, 2026
IBM’s warning suggested AI infrastructure spending is now displacing hardware budgets, too—squeezing a company whose customers install traditional systems in their own data centers and can defer big-ticket upgrades such as mainframes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
Pet interrupted her by appearing slowly, a heaviness displacing the air.
From "Pet" by Akwaeke Emezi
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions 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.
