Migrant

How to spell migrant

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce migrant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does migrant mean?

1. nounA person who moves from one place or country to another, often to find work or better living conditions.
2. adjectiveMoving from one region or habitat to another, especially with the seasons.

Migrant in a sentence

• noun

  The charity provides legal advice to every migrant who arrives at the centre.

• adjective

  The migrant workforce follows the harvest from one county to the next.

• noun

  The report tracked how each seasonal migrant found temporary work on the farms.

• adjective

  Researchers tagged the migrant bird to study its annual route south.

Where does migrant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb migrare, which meant 'to move from one place to another' or 'to change one's dwelling'. The present participle migrans (stem migrant-) described a person or thing that was in the act of moving, and English adopted this form to label someone who relocates. The word entered English in the early 1700s, somewhat later than its cousin 'emigrant', and it shares its root with a whole family of relatives, including migrate, migration, immigrant, and emigrant. The spelling preserves the Latin -ant ending of the participle, which is the small trap: writers sometimes drift toward -ent by analogy with words like 'resident'. Remembering that it grew from migrans, with an 'a', helps keep the ending correct.

How the word is built

• migr- (from migrare: to move from one place to another)
• -ant (noun/adjective suffix denoting one who does)