Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act of displacing.
  • noun The condition of having been displaced.
  • noun Chemistry A reaction in which an atom, radical, ion, or molecule replaces another in a compound.
  • noun A vector or the magnitude of a vector from the initial position to a subsequent position assumed by a body.
  • noun The weight or volume of a fluid displaced by a floating body, used especially as a measurement of the weight or bulk of ships.
  • noun The volume displaced by a single stroke of a piston in an engine or pump.
  • noun The relative movement between the two sides of a fault.
  • noun The distance between the two sides of a fault.
  • noun Psychiatry A psychological defense mechanism in which there is an unconscious shift of emotions, affect, or desires from the original object to a more acceptable or immediate substitute.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A putting out of place; removal from a former or usual or proper place, or from a position, dignity, or office.
  • noun A putting in the place of another or of something else; substitution in place; replacement by exchange.
  • noun In hydrostatics, the quantity of a liquid which is displaced by a solid body placed in it.
  • noun In pharmacy, a method by which the active principles of organic bodies are extracted from them.
  • noun In mech., the geometrical difference or exact relation between the position of a body at any moment and its initial position.
  • noun In veg. teratol., a malformation, in leaves, due to abnormal cohesion or fusion of parts which results in dislocation and other apparent changes in the form. Thus two fused leaves may appear like a single lobed leaf, a whorl may be reduced to two opposite leaves, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.
  • noun The quantity of anything, as water, displaced by a floating body, as by a ship, the weight of the displaced liquid being equal to that of the displacing body.
  • noun (Chem.) The process of extracting soluble substances from organic material and the like, whereby a quantity of saturated solvent is displaced, or removed, for another quantity of the solvent.
  • noun (Mech.) the volume of the space swept through, or weight of steam, water, etc., displaced, in a given time, by the piston of a steam engine or pump.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.
  • noun The quantity of anything, as water, displaced by a floating body, as by a ship, the weight of the displaced liquid being equal to that of the displacing body.
  • noun chemistry The process of extracting soluble substances from organic material and the like, whereby a quantity of saturated solvent is displaced, or removed, for another quantity of the solvent.
  • noun fencing Moving the target to avoid an attack; dodging.
  • noun physics A vector quantity which denotes distance with a directional component.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun act of taking the place of another especially using underhanded tactics
  • noun to move something from its natural environment
  • noun (chemistry) a reaction in which an elementary substance displaces and sets free a constituent element from a compound
  • noun an event in which something is displaced without rotation
  • noun act of removing from office or employment
  • noun the act of uniform movement
  • noun (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that transfers affect or reaction from the original object to some more acceptable one

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French déplacement.

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Examples

Comments

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  • You sneaky thang, Weirdnet.

    May 12, 2008

  • In shipbuilding, the all-inclusive mass or weight of a vessel measured in tonnes, equal to the mass of water displaced.

    August 25, 2009