migrate

English

Etymology

From Latin migratus, past participle of migrō (“migrate, change, transport”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /maɪ.ˈɡɹeɪt/, /ˈmaɪ.ɡɹeɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪt, -aɪɡɹeɪt

Verb

migrate (third-person singular simple present migrates, present participle migrating, simple past and past participle migrated)

1. (intransitive) To relocate periodically from one region to another, usually according to the seasons.

   Twice a year the geese migrate — from Florida to Canada and back again.

   Twice a year the Minnesotans migrate from their state to the Gulf of Mexico.

2. (intransitive) To change one's geographic pattern of habitation.

   Many groups had migrated to western Europe from the plains of eastern Europe.

3. (intransitive) To change habitations across a border; to move from one country or political region to another.

   To escape persecution, they migrated to a neutral country.

   • 1964, John F. Kennedy, “Why They Came”, in A Nation of Immigrants‎, Revised and Enlarged edition, Harper & Row, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 4:

     Little is more extraordinary than the decision to migrate, little more extraordinary than the accumulation of emotions and thoughts which finally leads a family to say farewell to a community where it has lived for centuries, to abandon old ties and familiar landmarks, and to sail across dark seas to a strange land.

4. (intransitive) To move slowly towards, usually in groups.

   Once the hosts started bickering in the kitchens, the guests began to migrate towards the living room.

5. (intransitive) To move gradually, especially from an intended to an unintended position.

   Oil was able to migrate from the accessory gearbox into the magneto housing through the improperly installed gland seals.

   • 2022 August 13, Donna Murray, “What Is an Anterior Placenta? How placenta placement affects pregnancy, labor, and delivery”, in verywellfamily‎:

     It is very common for the position of the placenta to change as the uterus stretches and grows. An anterior placenta can migrate toward the top, sides, or back of the uterus as the weeks go on.

6. (transitive, computing): To move computer code or files from one computer or network to another.

   They had finished migrating all of the affected code to the production server by 2:00am, three hours later than expected.

7. (transitive, marketing) To induce customers to shift purchases from one set of a company's related products to another.

   We were hoping to migrate the customers of the "C" series to the "E" series and the "E" customers to the "S" series.

Usage notes

Some people consider the jargonistic transitive form of this word to be improper, on the grounds that it is untraditional, and that if a transitive verb is to be constructed from migrate it should still be the subject that is doing the migrating. Alternatives include move, herd, transfer, or relocate. This objection is not widespread however, and migrate is the only term generally used to mean specifically the movement of computer code from one computer to another.

Derived terms

Related terms

• migrant

Translations

Anagrams

• Tregami, ragtime

Italian

Etymology 1

Verb

migrate

1. inflection of migrare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

Participle

migrate f pl

1. feminine plural of migrato

Anagrams

• gremita

Latin

Verb

migrāte

1. second-person plural present imperative of migrō

Participle

migrāte

1. vocative masculine singular of migrātus

Spanish

Verb

migrate

1. second-person singular voseo imperative of migrar combined with te