To displace means to move something or someone from their usual place or position. When you displace water in a bathtub by getting in, you push the water aside and it rises up the sides. When a new student joins your class and sits in the desk you've used all year, they've displaced you from your spot.

The word often describes situations where something takes the place of something else. A new technology might displace an older one: calculators displaced slide rules, and smartphones displaced cameras, music players, and maps. When this happens, the old technology loses its position to the new one.

Displace can also describe forcing people to leave their homes. Natural disasters like floods or hurricanes can displace entire communities, making them move to temporary shelters. Wars and conflicts have displaced millions of people throughout history, forcing them to become refugees seeking safety elsewhere.

In science, displacement measures how much space something takes up. Archimedes discovered that an object submerged in water displaces an amount of water equal to its volume, which is why the water level rises when you drop something into a full glass.