Evicted

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To be lawfully displaced from a residence due to breach of contract
2. To be forced out of a dwelling by legal process for violating rental terms
3. When someone is legally expelled from their home after breaking housing rules

Etymology: "Evicted" is the past form of "evict," and the verb's story begins with winning rather than losing. Its Latin source, "ēvincō," meant "to vanquish completely," from "ex-" ("out, thoroughly") and "vincō" ("to conquer"). Its past participle, "ēvictus," carried the sense of a claim or possession won in full, and in Latin law it came to describe a person who lost property after a court ruled that someone else had the better title to it. English borrowed the word from that legal usage in Middle English, so from the start it described the loss of something held rather than an act of violence. Over time the sense narrowed from losing property in general to being thrown out of a home or land. The word became attached to tenancy and landlord disputes, and by the modern period "evict" means removing someone from premises through legal process, which is how it is used today. Its near relation "evince," which means to show or reveal, is a doublet: both come from the same Latin root but entered English by different routes, and the sense of "to conquer" survives only faintly in the sense of forcing something out into the open.

Synonyms: ousted, removed

Antonyms: welcomed, received