migrate
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
to move from one part of the world to another at certain times of the year.
to relocate periodically from one region to another, typically in response to seasonal changes or breeding cycles.
Simple“Many birds migrate south in the winter to find warmer weather and more food.”
In context“Arctic terns migrate incredible distances each year, traveling from their northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic and back again.”
UsageIntransitive; does not take a direct object.
- 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
to move to a different country or area to live and work there.
to change one's place of residence or geographic pattern of habitation, often across political borders.
Simple“Thousands of workers migrate to the cities every year looking for better jobs.”
In context“During the nineteenth century, millions of people migrated from Europe to the Americas in search of economic opportunity and political stability.”
UsageIntransitive; often used with the preposition 'to' or 'from'.
- 03 C1 Advanced
to move computer data or software from one system or format to another.
to transfer data, software, or hardware configurations from one operating environment or storage format to another.
Simple“The company needs to migrate all its old files to the new cloud system.”
In context“The IT department spent the weekend migrating the legacy database to a more secure server architecture to improve performance.”
UsageCan be used transitively (migrate data) or intransitively (the system migrated).
Teacher's tipIn technical contexts, this implies a planned and structured transition rather than a simple copy-paste action.
“The men’s attention migrated toward food in the middle of conversations, tasks, their own sentences.”
“The African armyworm causes the most damage in its caterpillar stage but is also hard to control when it develops into a moth, allowing populations to migrate.”
First attested in 1623; borrowed from Latin migrātus, perfect passive participle of migrō (“to migrate, change, transport”), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.