displace
verb
Simple meaning
Cause to move, usually with force or pressure.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
dihsplaysSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
dɪspˈleɪs
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
Cause to move, usually with force or pressure
“The refugees were displaced by the war.”
Take the place of or have precedence over
To supplant, or take the place of something or someone; to substitute.
To move something, or someone, especially to forcibly move people from their homeland.
To put out of place; to disarrange.
of a floating ship
To have a weight equal to that of the water displaced.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient
- Frequency
- Uncommon
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Cause to move, usually with force or pressure
Used this way, displace is a common word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
“The refugees were displaced by the war.”
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use displace
- “The refugees were displaced by the war.”verb
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Act of taking the place of another especially using underhanded tactics.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Fracture in which the two ends of the broken bone are separated from one another.
A person forced to flee from home or country.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A reaction in which an elementary substance displaces and sets free a constituent element from a compound.
The volume of a body immersed in a fluid is equal to the volume of the displaced fluid.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.