displace
Americanverb (used with object)
-
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)
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.
At a plaza at the complex, people manning a local relief effort collected donations and distributed essentials such as clothing, bedding, diapers and food to residents displaced by the fire.
She and her family are still displaced from their Altadena home.
From Los Angeles Times
As U.S. expansion displaced indigenous nations, Native peoples entered wage labor, in ways that often extended traditional work.
Media fragmentation and the constant flow of information are presented as making it harder for scandals to reach critical mass, as new controversies quickly displace previous ones.
From Los Angeles Times
The cyclone has become Sri Lanka's deadliest natural disaster since 2017, when flooding and landslides claimed more than 200 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.
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.
