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displacement

noun

Simple meaning

The weight of a ship or other floating vessel.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

dihsplaysmuhnt

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

dɪspˈleɪsmənt

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.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.

  2. The weight of a ship or other floating vessel, traditionally measured or calculated by finding the volume of the vessel below the waterline when afloat, the weight of the displaced liquid being equal to that of the whole displacing body.

  3. physics

    A vector quantity which denotes distance with a directional component.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate
Frequency
Moderately Common
Typical Use
Neutral / general English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.

Used this way, displacement is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
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 displacement

  • “The displacement of the old furniture made space for the new couch.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Weight

angular displacement

Transfer

displacement current

Total

relative displacementmaximum displacement

Other combinations

vertical displacementlateral displacementhorizontal displacementpositive displacement

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • displacement reactionnounCompound term

    A reaction in which an elementary substance displaces and sets free a constituent element from a compound.

  • displacement unitnounCompound term

    A unit of measurement of volume or capacity.

  • principle of liquid displacementnounCompound term

    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.