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refugee

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English

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Etymology

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From French réfugié, past participle of réfugier (“to take refuge, to seek refuge”),[1][2] from Old French refuge (“hiding place”) from Latin refugium (“a place of refuge, place to flee back to”), originally describing French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Sense 1 was "one seeking asylum" until 1914, when it evolved to mean more generally "one fleeing home" (first applied in this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I).[3] By surface analysis, refuge +‎ -ee. Displaced native Old English flīema.

Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/, /ɹɛfjʊˈd͡ʒiː/
  • Rhymes: -iː
  • Audio (UK):(file)

Noun

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refugee (plural refugees)

  2. (attributive, also figurative) A person seeking refuge (as for shelter or protection), especially in a foreign country, out of fear or prospect of political, religious persecution, war, natural disaster, etc. [from 1680s]
    • 1964, John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants‎[2], Revised and Enlarged edition, Harper & Row, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 78–79:
      In 1962 a special law had to be passed to permit the immigration of several thousand Chinese refugees who had escaped from Communist China to Hong Kong.
    • 2021 September 13, Priscilla Alvarez and Oren Liebermann, “Inside the effort to resettle thousands of Afghans in the United States”, in CNN‎[3]:
      The eight military bases being used to house Afghan refugees have a total capacity of 50,000 to house evacuees. […] The nine refugee resettlement agencies who work in coordination with the federal government will ultimately determine where Afghans are relocated, based on whether they have US ties or where their local affiliates have capacity to take them in.
    • 2005 September 4, Robert D. McFadden, “Bush Pledges More Troops as Evacuation Grows”, in The New York Times‎[4]:
      While thousands of refugees were evacuated from the New Orleans convention center, chaos continued at the airport, thousands were still trapped in homes and hotels, fires raged virtually unchecked in parts of the city, the power was out, and vast sections were still under water.
    • 2010, Brian Harrison, Finding a Role?: The United Kingdom 1970-1990, page 2181:
      Why did the SDP dream eventually fade? Partly because it succeeded far better inside parliament than out. It might attract some inner-city Catholic traditionalist Labour refugees from Labour's left, but many of those were already gentrifying.
    • 2022 June 13, “Video shows Zelensky call on world to help Taiwan before China invades”, in Taiwan News‎[5], archived from the original on 13 June 2022:
      Alluding to the regional consequences of a war in the Taiwan Strait, Zelensky pointed out that there could be millions of refugees, similar to the result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    • 2024 September 4, Vitali Vitaliev, “A salute to Ukraine's 'Second Army'”, in RAIL, number 1017, page 49:
      My son, a Canada-based IT professional who often travels to Ukraine, told me about the exhilarating atmosphere on those Ukraine-bound trains, bringing home hundreds of the unwilling refugees, mostly women and children (including the babies, born in exile on the way to meet their Ukrainian fighter fathers for the first time). The difference between Ukrainian refugees and other reluctant exiles is that Ukrainians are desperate to return.
  3. (derogatory, by extension) A person who is fleeing from justice, punishment deemed righteous, etc.; a runaway, a fugitive. [from 1750s]

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Verb

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refugee (third-person singular simple present refugees, present participle refugeeing, simple past and past participle refugeed)

  1. (transitive, US, historical) To convey (slaves) away from the advance of the federal forces.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Etymology and history of “refugee”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
  2. ^ Michael Quinion (2005 September 17) “Refugee”, in World Wide Words‎[1]: “The term is itself French, and comes from réfugier, to seek refuge.”
  3. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2025) “refugee (n.)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.
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