refugee
- 01 C1 Advanced
a person who goes to a safe place to avoid a difficult situation or problem.
a person seeking shelter or protection from any distressing situation, used figuratively or broadly.
Simple“He was a refugee from the loud party, hiding in the quiet library.”
In context“The small coastal town became a refugee for city dwellers seeking a temporary escape from the relentless pace of urban life.”
Usagefrequently used with the preposition 'from'.
Usage refugee agency · refugee camp
“But a growing body of research, including my own, points to a difficulty that gets far less attention: how refugees feel they are treated in everyday American life.”
“During and after World War I, they worked together to assist Jewish refugees in Europe .”
From French réfugié, past participle of réfugier (“to take refuge, to seek refuge”), from Old French refuge (“hiding place”) from Latin refugium (“a place of refuge, place to flee back to”), originally describing French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Noun sense 1 was "one seeking asylum" until 1914, when it evolved to mean more generally "one fleeing home" (first applied in this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I). By surface analysis, refuge + -ee. Displaced native Old English flīema.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.