Word Confusion: Emigrate vs Immigrate vs Migrate

Posted May 26, 2014 by Kathy Davie in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
4 July 2023

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This is one of those confusions I always have to stop and think about: emigrate is to leave, exit while immigrate is to enter, go in.

Then migrate popped up.

The major difference between migrate and emigrate and immigrate is that the former is generally a temporary move dependent upon conditions while the latter two are generally a permanent move.

One . . .
emigrates from	OR	immigrates to
It’s generally the birds and other animals that . . .
migrate from place to place temporarily

What can I say? We all have our blind spots. The trick is to spot them!

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Emigrate	Immigrate	Migrate
Good Heaven What Sorrows Gloom that Parting Day painting by Thomas Falcon Marshall, 1818–1878, Britain, is in the public domain with details of the artist on Google Art Project, via Wikimedia Commons. — Thomas Falcon Marshall’s painting, Emigration — the parting day	Ellis Island courtesy of Aude is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. — Landing at Ellis Island, 1902 emigrants coming up the boardwalk from the barge, which has taken them off the steamship company’s docks, and transported them to Ellis Island.	Zebra Migration, Okavango, Botswana, by Alana Lowes is under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, via Life Begins At.com.au. — Researchers note the zebras who migrate to the Makgadikgadi Pans.
Part of Grammar:
Verb, intransitive Third person present verb: emigrates Past tense or past participle: emigrated Present participle: emigrating	Verb, intransitive & transitive Third person present verb: immigrates Past tense or past participle: immigrated Present participle: immigrating	Verb, intransitive & transitive Third person present verb: migrates Past tense or past participle: migrated Present participle: migrating
Leave one’s own country in order to settle permanently in another	Verb, intransitive: Come to live permanently in a foreign country To enter a country, intending to remain there To pass or come into a new habitat or place, as an organism Verb, transitive: To introduce as settlers	Verb, intransitive: [Of an animal, typically a bird or fish] Move from one region or habitat to another according to the seasons [Of a person] Move to a new area or country in order to find work or better living conditions Move from one part of something to another To shift, as from one system, mode of operation, or enterprise to another [Physiology; of a cell, tissue, etc.] To move from one region of the body to another, as in embryonic development [Computing] Change or cause to change from one system to another [Chemistry; of ions] To move toward an electrode during electrolysis [Of atoms within a molecule] To change position [At British universities] To change or transfer from one college to another Verb, transitive: [Computing] Change or cause to change from one system to another Transfer (programs or hardware) from one system to another [Marketing] To induce customers to shift purchases from one set of a company’s related products to another
Examples:
Rosa’s parents emigrated from Argentina. My maternal great-great grandparents emigrated from Norway. Many Mexicans emigrate to the US because they can have a better life.	Verb, intransitive: The Mennonites immigrated to western Canada in the 1870s. After the California Gold Rush, contractors immigrated Chinese laborers to work mines, build railroads, and work on farms. My aunt emigrated from Poland and immigrated to Canada. Verb, transitive: They intend to immigrate cheap labor. After having visited Norway, I know why Scandinavians immigrated into Minnesota and Wisconsin.	Verb, intransitive: As autumn arrives, the birds migrate south. Rural populations have migrated to urban areas. Cells that can form pigment migrate beneath the skin. Filarial worms migrate within the human body. Customers are migrating from mainframes to client-server environments. A few of us are hoping to migrate from Balliol to Jesus. Verb, transitive: We can save time by efficiently migrating data to secondary storage systems. The system will allow users to migrate applications across environments. They had finished migrating all of the affected code to the production server by 2:00 am, three hours later than expected. We were hoping to migrate the customers of the “C” series to the “E” series and the “E” customers to the “S” series.
Derivatives:
Adjective: emigrative, emigratory, unemigrating Noun: emigrant, emigrating, emigration Verb, intransitive: reemigrate, reemigrated, reemigrating	Adjective: immigrational, immigratory, unimmigrating Noun: immigrant, immigrating, immigration, immigrator	Adjective: migratable, migratory, nonmigrating Noun: migrating, migration, migrator, nonmigrating Verb, intransitive: intermigrate, intermigrated, intermigrating, remigrate, remigrated, remigrating
History of the Word:
Late 18th century from the Latin emigrat-, or emigrated, from the verb emigrare, from e-, a variant of ex- (out of) + migrare (migrate).	Early 17th century from the Latin immigrat-, or immigrated, from the verb immigrare, from in- (into) + migrare (migrate).	Early 17th century, in the general sense move from one place to another, from the Latin migrat- meaning moved, shifted, from the verb migrāre.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan . . . which words are your pet peeves? Also, please note that I try to be as accurate as I can, but mistakes happen or I miss something. Email me if you find errors, so I can fix them . . . and we’ll all benefit!

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Book Layout & Formatting Ideas, Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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