Highland Clearances

British

plural noun

Also called: the Clearances. in Scotland, the removal, often by force, of the people from some parts of the Highlands to make way for sheep, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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.

But delve into its past and the castle has links with the makers of Worcestershire Sauce, and the land it was built on with the Highland Clearances.

From BBC • Jan. 24, 2024

Sinclair’s discursive, intensely literate prose knits together time and place, drawing parallels between stolen Indigenous land and the Highland Clearances that left his own Scottish forebears dispossessed.

From Washington Post • Nov. 4, 2021

He argues the Sugar Shed is the ideal location for a national "museum of human rights", highlighting not just slavery but also other historical injustices such as the Highland Clearances.

From BBC • Aug. 29, 2020

Mealista, or Mealasta in the Gaelic spelling, is a small township in the west of the Isle of Lewis that has been uninhabited since the Highland Clearances of 1838.

From The Guardian • Jun. 28, 2017

Starting as a trickle, the migration rose to a torrent amid the Highland Clearances, in which tenant farmers in Scotland were evicted from their lands by property owners.

From New York Times • Nov. 10, 2016

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023