emigrate
Formsemigrates, emigrating, emigrated
Often confused with immigrate
- 1To move out of the country you live in, especially your country of birth, and settle somewhere else.
She plans to emigrate from Ireland once she finishes her medical training.
After years of drought, thousands of farming families emigrated to Argentina in search of land.
Similarmigrate, relocate, move
Oppositeimmigrate
Note
The prefix fixes the point of view: Latin emigro is ex-, "out of", plus migro, "to move", so the verb looks back at the place being left. It takes no object, and the places hang on prepositions instead: a family emigrates from Ireland, to Argentina, or, as Newman writes of the Huns, from Tartary into Europe. Whole groups can do it together, as Macaulay's "emigrate in a body" shows.
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Origin
From Latin emigratus, the perfect passive participle of emigro ("to move away, remove, depart from a place"), from ex- ("out of, from") + migro ("to move, remove, depart").