displace

[dis-pleys]

verb (used with object)

displaced, displacing 

1. to compel (a person or persons) to leave home, country, etc.

2. to move or put out of the usual or proper place.

   Synonyms: relocate

3. to take the place of; replace; supplant.

   Fiction displaces fact.

4. to remove from a position, office, or dignity.

   Synonyms: dismiss, oust, depose

5. Obsolete.,  to rid oneself of.

displace

/ dɪsˈpleɪs /

verb

1. to move from the usual or correct location

2. to remove from office or employment

3. to occupy the place of; replace; supplant

4. to force (someone) to leave home or country, as during a war

5. chem to replace (an atom or group in a chemical compound) by another atom or group

6. physics to cause a displacement of (a quantity of liquid, usually water of a specified type and density)

Other Word Forms

• displaceable adjective
• predisplace verb (used with object)
• undisplaceable adjective
• displacer noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of displace¹

1545–55; dis- ¹ + place, perhaps modeled on Middle French desplacer

Synonym Study

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.

Example Sentences

Today the “more conventional methods” have been largely displaced by newer forms of electronic communications.

Read more on Wall Street Journal

The fighting has displaced almost all of Gaza’s more than two million people and caused a humanitarian crisis.

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Palestinians displaced by the war in told the Associated Press that they hoped the peace deal would allow them to leave the shelters and come home.

Read more on BBC

"I saw displaced children just spending their time in queues for food and water - not having a childhood, and I wanted to do something, for them," she says.

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Its pre-war faces replaced by an ever-changing confetti of displaced people.

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Related Words

• disturb 
• evict 
• expel 
• force out 
• lose 
• uproot