to move regularly from one region to another at a particular season of the year, as some birds, fish, and animals do.
Every autumn, Arctic terns migrate south to Antarctica.
Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles to Mexico.
✦ From Latin mīgrāre (“to move, migrate”), from Proto-Italic *mīgrāre, from Proto-Indo-European *meiḱ- (“to change, go, move”). Cognate with Ancient Greek ἀμείβω (ameíbō, “to change”).
to leave one's country or region to live and work in another.
Millions of people migrate to cities each year.
Her family decided to migrate from the farm to the city.
to move a computer program or data to a different system or location.
IT teams often migrate servers to the cloud.
We must migrate the old software to the new version.
to leave one's country permanently in order to live in another.
During the economic crisis, many families decided to emigrate to find better opportunities.
She emigrated from Mexico to the United States as a teenager.
✦ From Latin emigrare (“to move away”), from e- (“out”) + migrare (“to migrate”). First used in English in the early 18th century.
