Exiles

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. People who have been driven from their native country due to circumstances beyond their control
2. Groups that reside away from their homeland often due to political, social, or economic factors
3. Individuals compelled to live in a foreign land after being displaced from their original homeland

Etymology: The noun here is the plural of "exile," and the word it comes from is a Latin term for a person forced out of their own country. In Latin, "exsul" meant a banished person, built from "ex," meaning "out of," and a root tied to "solum," the ground or soil. To be an "exsul" was to be pushed off your own land, and the Latin noun "exsilium" named the condition itself: the state of being exiled. Middle English borrowed the idea through Old French, which gave us "essil" and "exil." Those forms carried the Latin sense of forced removal from home into English, where the word first named the banishment itself before it came to name the people living through it. The plural "exiles" therefore points to a group of people who share that Latin-rooted experience of being cut off from their homeland.

Synonyms: outsiders, refugees, emigrants, deportees, castaways

Antonyms: citizens, inhabitants, natives, locals, residents