displacement

Etymology

It is formed from English displace + -ment.^[2][3][4][5] The OED compares Old French desplacement, modern French déplacement, perhaps the immediate source of the first sense, removal from office.^[2][5] The verb displace is from desplacer (15th century),^[3][2] from des- and placer (“to place”), from place.^[3][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Removal from an office or dignity; deposition: 1611, in John Speed's History of Great Britaine.^[2][6][3] The OED notes that this earliest sense is somewhat rare,^[2] and the Shorter Oxford calls it rare.^[5] Random House dates the word to 1605–15.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The general sense, the removal of a thing from its place, is recorded from 1803, and most of the later senses are scientific.^[2] From 1809, in Etymonline, or 1816, in the OED's first quotation from shipbuilding, it meant the amount of liquid pushed aside by a body floating or immersed in it, and so the size of a ship.^[3][2] In physics, from 1837 in Whewell, it was the distance by which a body has moved from its first position.^[2][3] Engineers have used it since 1897 for the volume swept by a piston in a pump or engine.^[2] In 1913 A. A. Brill's translation of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams used it for the unconscious shift of an idea or feeling onto a substitute,^[2] part of a wider pattern of describing the mind in terms of place and position that grew in the early 20th century.^[7] In 1947 the ethologist E. A. Armstrong used it for behaviour that appears out of its usual context when an animal is torn between two impulses, now called displacement activity.^[2]

Timeline

• 1611 – removal from office.^[2][6]
• 1803 – removal of a thing from its place.^[2]
• 1809 – the quantity of liquid displaced by a solid body.^[3]
• 1816 – the weight or volume of water displaced by a ship.^[2]
• 1837 – physics, the distance by which a body is moved.^[2][3]
• 1869 – replacement of one thing by another.^[2]
• 1897 – the volume swept by a piston.^[2]
• 1913 – psychology, transfer of feelings onto a substitute.^[2]
• 1947 – in displacement activity.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The act of moving something or someone out of its usual place, or the state of being moved out of it: the displacement of villagers by the dam.^[8][6][9]
2. Removal from office; deposition.^[6][2]
3. The volume or weight of a fluid pushed aside by a floating or submerged body, used as a measure of the size of a ship.^[8][9][2]
4. (physics) The distance and direction between the starting position of a body and its later position.^[9][2]
5. The volume swept by the pistons of an engine or pump.^[8][2]
6. (psychoanalysis) The unconscious transfer of feelings from their real object to a substitute.^[8][2]
7. (chemistry) Another name for substitution.^[8]
8. (geology) The distance a point on one side of a fault has moved in relation to the other side.^[8]

Word family

• predisplacement
• displacement activity
• displacement current
• displacement ton

Related words

• displace
• place
• replacement

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus, University of Glasgow, mappingmetaphor.arts.gla.ac.uk
8. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
9. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster