exile

1. 1.

   a person who is voluntarily absent from home or country

   “American expatriates”

   Synonymsexpatriateexpat

   Broaderabsentee

   Narrowerrefugeeremittance man
2. 2.

   a person who is expelled from home or country by authority

   Synonymsdeportee

   Broaderforeigner
3. 3.

   the act of expelling a person from their native land

   “men in exile dream of hope”

   “his deportation to a penal colony”

   “the expatriation of wealthy farmers”

   “the sentence was one of transportation for life”

   Synonymsdeportationexpatriationtransportation

   Broaderbanishment

   NarrowerBabylonian Captivity

1. 1.

   expel from a country

   “The poet was exiled because he signed a letter protesting the government's actions”

   Synonymsexpatriatedeport

   Broaderexpel

Other forms of exile

plural

exiles·

past tense

exiled·

present participle

exiling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about exile

What does exile mean?

exile means "a person who is voluntarily absent from home or country". That is the primary sense; the word has 4 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in exile?

exile has 2 syllables: exil-e. The stress falls on "exil". In IPA it is /ˈɛɡˌzaɪl/.

What is another word for exile?

Close synonyms include expatriate, expat, deportee, deportation, expatriation. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is exile a common word?

exile is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.