# refugee
## English
### Etymology

From French réfugié, past participle of réfugier (“to take refuge”), describing early French Protestants seeking refuge after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Analyzable as refuge +‎ -ee. Displaced native Old English flīema.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/, /ɹɛfjʊˈd͡ʒiː/
* Rhymes: -iː
* Audio (UK):(file)

### Noun

refugee (plural refugees)
* A person seeking refuge in a foreign country out of fear of political persecution or the prospect of such persecution in their home country, i.e., a person seeking political asylum.
** 1964, John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants‎, Revised and Enlarged edition, Harper & Row, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 78–79:In 1962 a special law had to be passed to permit the immigration of several thousand Chinese refugees who had escaped from Communist China to Hong Kong.
* A person seeking refuge due to a natural disaster, war, etc.
** 2021 September 13, Priscilla Alvarez and Oren Liebermann, “Inside the effort to resettle thousands of Afghans in the United States”, in CNN‎:The eight military bases being used to house Afghan refugees have a total capacity of 50,000 to house evacuees. […] The nine refugee resettlement agencies who work in coordination with the federal government will ultimately determine where Afghans are relocated, based on whether they have US ties or where their local affiliates have capacity to take them in.
** 2022 June 13, “Video shows Zelensky call on world to help Taiwan before China invades”, in Taiwan News‎, archived from the original on 13 June 2022:Alluding to the regional consequences of a war in the Taiwan Strait, Zelensky pointed out that there could be millions of refugees, similar to the result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
** 2024 September 4, Vitali Vitaliev, “A salute to Ukraine's 'Second Army'”, in RAIL, number 1017, page 49:My son, a Canada-based IT professional who often travels to Ukraine, told me about the exhilarating atmosphere on those Ukraine-bound trains, bringing home hundreds of the unwilling refugees, mostly women and children (including the babies, born in exile on the way to meet their Ukrainian fighter fathers for the first time). The difference between Ukrainian refugees and other reluctant exiles is that Ukrainians are desperate to return.
* A person formally granted political or economic asylum by a country other than their home country.
* (by extension) A person who flees one place or institution for another.
** 2010, Brian Harrison, Finding a Role?: The United Kingdom 1970-1990, page 2181:Why did the SDP dream eventually fade? Partly because it succeeded far better inside parliament than out. It might attract some inner-city Catholic traditionalist Labour refugees from Labour's left, but many of those were already gentrifying.

#### Synonyms

* flightling

#### Derived terms

* climate refugee
* economic refugee
* environmental refugee
* internal refugee
* quota refugee
* rapefugee
* reffo
* refugee camp
* refugeehood
* refugitive

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### Verb

refugee (third-person singular simple present refugees, present participle refugeeing, simple past and past participle refugeed)
* (transitive, US, historical) To convey (slaves) away from the advance of the federal forces.

### See also

* asylum
* citizenshipless
* countryless
* economic asylum
* internally displaced person
* nationless
* political asylum
* refoulement
* refuge