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
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.
