Deportation

How to spell deportation

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce deportation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deportation mean?

1. nounThe official removal of a foreign national from a country, usually for breaching immigration or residency laws.

Deportation in a sentence

• The lawyer filed an appeal to halt his client's deportation.

• Overstaying the visa put her at risk of deportation.

Where does deportation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb deportare, which combined de-, meaning 'away', with portare, meaning 'to carry', so the literal sense was 'to carry away'. In Roman times deportatio was a formal punishment in which a citizen was carried off and banished to a distant place, often an island, while losing their property and rights. The word travelled into English through French in the seventeenth century, keeping its meaning of forcibly removing a person from a country. The same portare root that supplies the 'port' in the middle also lives inside everyday words like transport, export and porter, all of which involve carrying something. Remembering that 'port' means carry can help fix the single 't' and the steady de-port-ation spelling, since the only mild trap is the unstressed vowels in the surrounding syllables.

How the word is built

• de- (away)
• port (carry, from Latin portare)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)