emigrate
Americanverb (used without object)
-
emigrates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
emigrated,
past participle, past
-
emigrating
present participle
verb
Usage
What does emigrate mean? Emigrate means to permanently leave home in one country or region to settle in another. The act or occurrence of emigrating is called emigration. A person who is emigrating or has emigrated can be called an emigrant. What’s the difference between emigrate, immigrate, and migrate?To migrate is to move from one place to another (and perhaps back and forth). To emigrate is to move out, and to immigrate is to move in. For this reason, the word emigrate is commonly followed by from and the home country, whereas immigrate is commonly followed by to and the destination country. Of course, emigrate and immigrate are two ways to describe the same process—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 people to immigrate to, while another may be a place that people are frequently emigrating from. The words migrate and immigrate 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 emigrate is almost always about the starting point. Example: The lack of employment has caused a significant number of people to emigrate, with many highly skilled workers leaving the country.
Synonym Usage
See migrate.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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reemigrateverb (used without object)
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emigrativeadjective
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emigratoryadjective
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unemigratingadjective
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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emigratesimple
-
emigratessimple
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have emigratedperfect
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has emigratedperfect
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am emigratingprogressive
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are emigratingprogressive
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is emigratingprogressive
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have been emigratingperfect progressive
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has been emigratingperfect progressive
Past
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emigratedsimple
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had emigratedperfect
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was emigratingprogressive
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were emigratingprogressive
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had been emigratingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of emigrate
First recorded in 1770–80; from Latin ēmīgrātus “moved away” (past participle of ēmīgrāre ), equivalent to ē- “from, away from, out of” ( see e- 1) + mīgrātus ( mīgr- “remove” + ātus verb suffix ( see -ate 1)
Explanation
If you move to a different country, you emigrate. For example, if you emigrate from Canada and go to Italy, you aren't on vacation — you are making Italy your new home. Benvenuti! The verb emigrate comes from the Latin word emigrare, which means “move away,” or “depart from a place.” The words emigrate and immigrate both mean that a person has decided to permanently live in a foreign country, but to emigrate is to leave your country, and to immigrate is to come into a new country. To emigrate is to exit.
Vocabulary lists containing emigrate
Commonly Confused Words, List 1
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"A Place to Call Home," Vocabulary from the research study
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Geography
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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:
He said it has become the “last straw” for him, and he has decided to leave Venezuela and emigrate to Europe.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 7, 2026
He's a Moroccan man in his twenties and wants to emigrate to Europe - not least because he's been seeing lots of videos on Instagram that make the trip look easy.
From BBC ● Aug. 14, 2026
Zemlinsky did manage to emigrate to New York but died of pneumonia in 1942 without having been able to revive his career.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2026
Albania has been in a demographic crisis for decades, as people emigrate abroad in search of better work prospects.
From Barron's ● Jun. 9, 2026
To himself John Isidore thought acidly, And it’s gone away for me, too, without my having to emigrate.
From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick
The two lose contact for 12 years after Nora’s family emigrates to the United States and reconnect after Hae-sung finds her again on Facebook.
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2024
The top prize for best feature went to drama Past Lives, about childhood sweethearts in South Korea who are separated when one emigrates to the US.
From BBC ● Nov. 28, 2023
“No one emigrates from their country because they want to. One migrates because you have basic needs and there isn’t support in your native country,” she said, starting to cry.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 6, 2023
But lest we think child migration is new, there’s Ruth Behar’s young adult novel “Letters From Cuba,” about a girl who emigrates solo from Poland to Cuba during World War II.
From New York Times ● Sep. 2, 2021
Nine times out of ten it is because he feels confident he can increase the comfort and happiness of his wife and children that the settler emigrates to Western Canada.
From Canada West by Canada. Dept. of the interior
Particularly compelling is the partnership that arose between Cockenoe, an indigenous man from Long Island, and John Eliot, a Puritan minister who emigrated to Boston in 1631.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
More than one million people died during the Irish famine between 1845 and 1852, when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and about two million emigrated over the following decade.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2026
Sitting in a circle, students, retirees and professionals share similar worries: blackouts, economic hardship, relatives who have emigrated and plans put on hold.
From Barron's ● Aug. 4, 2026
Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 13, 2026
My great-great-grandparents emigrated to America at the turn of the twentieth century; any relatives of mine who died in the Holocaust were cousins of ancestors I never knew.
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
He has often talked about his great-grandfather Edmund "Ned" Burke who lived in Drogheda before emigrating with his family to Liverpool in the late 19th Century.
From BBC ● Aug. 27, 2026
The menu revolves around the food of Barsoom’s native Egypt, where she lived before emigrating to Canada in 2000.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 11, 2026
The United States is looking to give former Afghan allies stuck in Qatar a choice between emigrating to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo or returning to their Taliban-ruled homeland, an activist said Tuesday.
From Barron's ● Apr. 21, 2026
She’s working on her third novel, on Malaysia, where she was born before emigrating at age 2.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026
One of the many downsides of emigrating from one country to another is that you're not always left with the option to follow your dreams.
From "Americanized" by Sara Saedi
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.
