displace
Americanverb (used with object)
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displaces,
present (3rd person singular)
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displaced,
past participle, past
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displacing
present participle
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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)
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
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displacesimple
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displacessimple
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have displacedperfect
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has displacedperfect
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am displacingprogressive
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are displacingprogressive
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is displacingprogressive
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have been displacingperfect progressive
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has been displacingperfect progressive
Past
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displacedsimple
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had displacedperfect
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was displacingprogressive
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were displacingprogressive
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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"
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100 Great Words from "Fahrenheit 451" -- Part I Vocabulary
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"Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began" by Art Spiegelman
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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.
See Examples For:
Powerful storms, landslides, and other extreme events can bend or displace trees, making the capacity to regain an appropriate posture essential for their resilience.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 1, 2026
“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
The defender is a key player for her club but struggles to break into the England team with Bronze understandably a tough figure to displace.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
Locals worry the project would hurt businesses, since the track’s footprint would displace some.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Only the further evidence that I’ll now present can help us answer two more questions: What advantages enabled the Bantu to displace the Pygmies and Khoisan?
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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
They are typically generated when a sudden disturbance, such as an earthquake, underwater landslide, or asteroid impact, rapidly displaces the water above it.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 21, 2026
The Pentagon has estimated that the Fujian, which displaces more than 80,000 tons when fully loaded, can deploy up to 40 fixed-wing aircraft alongside a complement of helicopters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
But opponents say it displaces businesses in downtown Inglewood and would be cheaper and more efficient to create dedicated bus lanes to and from the entertainment district.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2024
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 Philippines foreign ministry earlier said Lazaro had spent Wednesday in the eastern state of Shan, overseeing humanitarian schemes aiding those displaced in the civil war triggered by the coup.
From Barron's ● Oct. 29, 2026
The United Nations says around 800,000 people can no longer receive lifesaving aid and more than 250,000 have been displaced, after an informal ceasefire collapsed in the summer.
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 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
While staying at the displaced people s camp, Meng, Khouy, and Kim leave to go fishing every morning.
From "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers" by Loung Ung
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
“Waymo or autonomous vehicles generally should not be displacing people,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 30, 2026
He set his sights on Brazil, where Russian diesel was displacing more expensive American fuel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 26, 2026
Unlike most other insects, ivy bees sometimes defended their feeding spots by chasing or displacing honey bees, successfully competing for access to flowers.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 22, 2026
Entire neighborhoods disappeared into the insatiable maw of urban renewal, displacing residents into an already tight housing market.
From "The Best of Enemies" by Osha Gray Davidson
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