Diaspora

How to spell diaspora

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce diaspora

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diaspora mean?

1. nounThe dispersal of a people from their original homeland, or the scattered communities that result.

Diaspora in a sentence

• The conference brought together scholars from across the diaspora.

• Many in the diaspora send money home to relatives every month.

Where does diaspora come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes straight from the Greek diaspora, meaning 'a dispersion' or 'a scattering'. It was built from the verb diaspeirein, 'to scatter about', which joins dia-, meaning 'across' or 'apart', with speirein, meaning 'to sow' or 'to scatter seed'. The agricultural image is the key to its spelling: people are imagined being sown abroad like seeds flung across a field, which is why the middle holds the 'spor' of sowing, the same root that gives us 'spore' and 'sporadic'. The term gained its lasting force in the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, where it described Jewish communities living scattered far from their homeland. English took the word up in the late 1800s, at first for that historic Jewish dispersion and later for any large community that has settled away from its ancestral home.

How the word is built

• dia- (across, apart)
• spor- (to sow, scatter, from Greek speirein)
• -a (noun ending)