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.
Hypocrisy is the more-or-less conscious habit of saying one thing and doing another; projection is the mostly unconscious process of displacing one’s own unacceptable intentions onto other people’s presumed desires.
From Salon
In 2024, North Korea rejected international aid for floods that displaced thousands.
When he visited her grave, he saw a pile of stones and had an epiphany as he realised that, when gravediggers make space for a coffin, they don't return the stones they have displaced.
From BBC
Government programs have provided a cushion to displaced workers, but they have also impeded the transitions.
“In this environment, updates from models like Claude could become as market-moving as key economic data releases, as investors assess which businesses may be easily replicated or displaced by AI.”
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.
