# migrate

/ˈmaɪˌɡɹeɪt/ (US) · /maɪɡɹˈeɪt/ (UK)

Source: https://englishreference.com/word/migrate
Updated: 2026-08-08

## Senses

### 1. animals/birds

verb · CEFR B2

to move from one part of the world to another at certain times of the year.

For teachers: to relocate periodically from one region to another, typically in response to seasonal changes or breeding cycles.

- Many birds migrate south in the winter to find warmer weather and more food.
- Arctic terns migrate incredible distances each year, traveling from their northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic and back again.

Usage: Intransitive; does not take a direct object.

### 2. people/residency

verb · CEFR B2 · Academic

to move to a different country or area to live and work there.

For teachers: to change one's place of residence or geographic pattern of habitation, often across political borders.

- Thousands of workers migrate to the cities every year looking for better jobs.
- During the nineteenth century, millions of people migrated from Europe to the Americas in search of economic opportunity and political stability.

Usage: Intransitive; often used with the preposition 'to' or 'from'.

### 3. computing/data

verb · CEFR C1 · Technical

to move computer data or software from one system or format to another.

For teachers: to transfer data, software, or hardware configurations from one operating environment or storage format to another.

- The company needs to migrate all its old files to the new cloud system.
- The IT department spent the weekend migrating the legacy database to a more secure server architecture to improve performance.

Usage: Can be used transitively (migrate data) or intransitively (the system migrated).

Teaching tip: In technical contexts, this implies a planned and structured transition rather than a simple copy-paste action.

## Examples

- We need to migrate our files to the new server.
- The IT department plans to migrate all user accounts to the cloud-based platform over the weekend to minimize downtime.
- Legacy systems often prove difficult to migrate because their proprietary data structures are incompatible with modern relational databases, necessitating a complex extraction and transformation process.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.