expatriation

noun

ex·​pa·​tri·​a·​tion (ˌ)ek-ˌspā-trē-ˈā-shən 

plural expatriations

: removal or withdrawal from one's native land : the act or an instance of expatriating or the state of being expatriated

The brutal expatriation of thousands of Cherokee to Indian Territory is now commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears.

A central purpose of their expatriation was to escape the burdensome rules and customs of the native land, and they were in no hurry to assume a foreign set of obligations.

—Joseph O'Neill

At the time, however, the most prominent American poets of the Modernist golden age of the 1920s felt betrayed by the expatriation of Pound and Eliot and considered their poetry insufficiently American.

—Monroe K. Spears

Synonyms

• banishment
• deportation
• displacement
• exile
• expulsion
• relegation

Examples of expatriation in a Sentence

the brutal expatriation of thousands of Cherokee to Indian Territory is now commonly referred to as the Trail of Tears

Recent Examples on the Web

The indictment, originally filed in February 2024 but unsealed in May, has now been challenged by Ver and reignited discussions about the U.S. expatriation tax regime. —Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes, 7 Dec. 2024

Generally, worldwide assets are deemed sold at fair market value on the day before the expatriation. —Virginia La Torre Jeker, J.d., Forbes, 16 Oct. 2024

This will cause an immediate expatriation for tax purposes. —Virginia La Torre Jeker, J.d., Forbes, 16 Oct. 2024

Georges Simenon tried to escape his mother via success and money and expatriation, writing nearly four hundred novels and becoming very rich. —Matthew Gavin Frank, Harper's Magazine, 6 June 2023

Is its primary purpose to deter expatriation (preventing episodes like the one involving Ratcliffe), or to seek equivalence to the capital gain outcome that would have occurred if an actual sale took place the day before the person left the country? —Robert Goulder, Forbes, 7 June 2021

Pessoa would spend most of the next decade in Durban, and Zenith reasonably conjectures that expatriation at such a young age, into the household of a stepfather, no less, to which five half siblings were rapidly added, contributed to Pessoa’s lifelong attitude and posture as a stranger. —Benjamin Kunkel, Harper's Magazine, 26 Oct. 2021

Compared with the 36,840 names that have appeared on the Federal Register’s expatriation list this decade, fewer than 2,500 were published for 2005 through 2009. —Jo Craven McGinty, WSJ, 16 Oct. 2020

Many people are fascinated by the Black expatriate experience, but most of that expatriation happened in the late twenties and early thirties. —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2022

Word History

First Known Use

1765, in the meaning defined above