expatriation
1 CulturalExplanation
Expatriation is the process of leaving your country and living in a new one, or the act of forcing a person to do this. If you decide to pack up your things and move to the remote island nation of Kiribati, that's expatriation. When a fairy tale king banishes a princess from the kingdom, it's one kind of expatriation—you could also call it "exile" or "deportation." Then there's the expatriation that happens when someone chooses to move from one country to another. A U.S. citizen might attend college in Canada, then stay and become a Canadian citizen afterward, for example. Expatriation comes from the French expatrier, "banish," from ex-, "out of," and the Latin patria, "native land."
Vocabulary lists containing expatriation
Not Your Father's Word List: Pater, Patr
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Citizenship and Civil Rights
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U.S. Government - Middle School and High School
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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.
The Court was clear: Except in very rare cases, denaturalization and expatriation were taken off the table.
From Salon ● Apr. 26, 2026
Brownell, Frankfurter delivered the opinion of the court supporting expatriation by beginning with “Petitioner, a national of the United States by birth …” Frankfurter went on to recount Perez’s history.
From Slate ● Jan. 15, 2026
In 1921 he joined the wave of expatriation and moved to France.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 7, 2025
These expatriation figures don’t reflect migration but merely show the number of Americans living abroad who have effectively decided to give up any right to move back to the U.S.A.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 19, 2025
And so we have him lovingly bending over the plants of his home-garden, packing the seeds to carry with him into exile, as though these could make expatriation tolerable.
From Garden-Craft Old and New by John D. Sedding
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
