emigrant
Americannoun
-
emigrants
plural
adjective
noun
Usage
What does emigrant mean? An emigrant is a person who has emigrated or is emigrating—permanently leaving home in one country or region to settle in another. The act or occurrence of emigrating is called emigration. What’s the difference between emigrant, immigrant, and migrant?A migrant is a person who moves from one place to another (and perhaps back and forth). An emigrant is someone who moves away, while an immigrant is someone who moves in. For this reason, the word emigrant is often followed by from and the home country, whereas immigrant is often followed by to and the destination country. Of course, emigrant and immigrant often refer to the same person—people who are emigrating are also immigrating (if they leave, they have to go somewhere). But there are good reasons to use each word in different situations. For example, one country may be a common destination for immigrants, while another may experience the frequent departure of emigrants. The words migrant and immigrant are more likely to be used to describe such relocation in a general way (that is, a way that takes both the starting point and the destination into account), whereas emigrant is almost always used in reference to the place that has been left. Less commonly, emigrant can be used as an adjective to mean in the process of emigrating, as in emigrant peoples. Another word for an emigrant is émigré, which especially refers to an emigrant who has fled their country due to political conditions. Example: The lack of employment has caused a significant number of emigrants to leave the country in search of jobs.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of emigrant
An Americanism dating back to 1745–55; from Latin ēmigrant- (stem of ēmigrāns ) “moving away” (present participle of ēmigrāre ), equivalent to ē- “from, out of” + migrant- ( migr-, stem of migrāre “to remove” + -ant- adjective suffix); see e- 1, -ant)
Explanation
An emigrant is a person who leaves his or her home country to live permanently in another country. Many Irish emigrants came to the United States in the late 1800s. The Latin root of emigrant is emigrationem, which means "removal from a place." Don't confuse emigrant with immigrant, which tells about the person's status in the new country. When you leave your native land, you are an emigrant, and when you are already settled in a new country, you are an immigrant. It's a subtle difference, but with an emigrant, the focus is more on the home country.
Vocabulary lists containing emigrant
"Democracy in America, Vol. 1" by Alexis de Tocqueville, Introduction–Chapter 5
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Chapter 13: Manifest Destiny
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G.3: Spatial Reorganization (Sources 1–10)
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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:
The emigrant ship is one of many familiar images from Irish history that surface throughout Ms. O’Farrell’s saga, which largely spans the period from 1865 to after the Irish Civil War.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
His wife Heidi Goodwin and her family have been Nature Friends regulars since the early 1960s, when their German emigrant father Benno Werstein joined.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2025
I’m a Russian emigrant journalist and former political activist.
From Slate ● Oct. 18, 2025
Myanmar has a lower percentage of Muslims in its population of residents compared with its emigrant population.
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2024
Under U.N. law each emigrant automatically received possession of an android subtype of his choice, and, by 2019, the variety of subtypes passed all understanding, in the manner of American automobiles of the 1960s.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
Property prices have also gone up in recent weeks in places like Georgia and Armenia, partly in anticipation of another wave of Russian emigrants, say real-estate agents in both countries.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
The tumult of 20th century Europe saw a new influx of Spaniard emigrants.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2026
Havana announced this week that it would allow Cuban emigrants to invest to address the communist island's severe economic and energy crises.
From Barron's ● Mar. 21, 2026
Remarkably, there is little to no accurate real-time data about the number of actual emigrants.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 18, 2025
Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.
From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston
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.
