displace
Americanverb (used with object)
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to compel (a person or persons) to leave home, country, etc.
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to move or put out of the usual or proper place.
- Synonyms:
- relocate
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to take the place of; replace; supplant.
Fiction displaces fact.
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to remove from a position, office, or dignity.
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Obsolete. to rid oneself of.
verb
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to move from the usual or correct location
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to remove from office or employment
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to occupy the place of; replace; supplant
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to force (someone) to leave home or country, as during a war
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chem to replace (an atom or group in a chemical compound) by another atom or group
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physics to cause a displacement of (a quantity of liquid, usually water of a specified type and density)
Related Words
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
- displaceable adjective
- displacer noun
- predisplace verb (used with object)
- undisplaceable adjective
Etymology
Origin of displace
1545–55; dis- 1 + place, perhaps modeled on Middle French desplacer
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.
"The Church must be a sanctuary for the displaced, not a platform for their expulsion."
From BBC
“It remains very difficult to replicate or displace much of the knowledge, metadata and workflows incumbent systems have amassed,” analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote this week.
In return, Europe offers inexpensive healthcare, walkable cities dotted with sidewalk bistros and co-working spaces where English has displaced the local tongue.
Chan also earmarked US$510 million for long-term housing arrangements for people displaced in a deadly housing estate fire last year.
From Barron's
The lives of more than 1.9 million displaced people in South Sudan are being put at risk due to aid funding shortages, the UN's migration agency said Wednesday.
From Barron's
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.
