Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
✈️ To send home 🏠 A returning citizen
to repatriate

to repatriate

13 7.4
To send someone back to their own country
  • verb
  • /ˌriːˈpeɪtriˌeɪt/
translation icon : repatriar
  • Efforts are underway to repatriate the remains of soldiers who died overseas.
  • repatriated refugees
  • forcibly repatriated
  • colonists repatriated

I mean, the way that Americans repatriate their dead from war as a matter of routine, Russians don't do that, right?

Examples

  • After the conflict, they worked diligently to repatriate refugees back to their homeland.

  • The English want us to repatriate, but back to what?

    Hurricane (2018)

  • Now that the war is over, this boy, Enzo, they want to repatriate him back to Italy.

    The Godfather (1972)

  • It's not just companies from unfriendly Western countries that are struggling to repatriate profits from Russia, either.

  • In May of 1992, President Bush ordered the Coast Guard to repatriate Haitian refugees fleeing by boat.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Aleksander Jurewicz (b. 1952) was repatriated with his family from Belarus to Poland in 1957.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • The government plans to repatriate citizens stranded abroad due to the pandemic.

Synonyms

to return
vsto repatriate
∞ 1.0

Give something back to its owner or the place it came from

applies only when people move to their own country rather than other cases
to take back
vsto repatriate
676 2.1

Return someone or something to the place they came from

applies when the person moves to their own country rather than any original place
to bring back
vsto repatriate
436 1.7

Return someone or something to the place they came from

applies when the person moves to their own country from abroad
to send back
vsto repatriate
123 1.5

To return something to the person or place it came from

refers specifically to moving people to their own country from abroad

Antonyms

to exile
46 5.6

To force someone to leave their country, often for political reasons

to expatriate
  • Formal
7.7

To force someone to leave their country as punishment

How Forced

to deport
  • Formal
182 5.5
to repatriate
13 7.4
return
413 1.0

Surface Forms

repatriate infinitive
repatriated past
repatriated past participle
repatriating present participle
repatriates third person singular

Morphology

repatriate = patriate (opaque) = re + patri + ate

The immediate base is recognizably prefixed with re-, but the stem itself is not transparent to most learners.

Etymology

The word repatriate comes from the parts re- meaning 'back' and patria meaning 'home country', like in patriot. So to repatriate someone is to send or bring them back to their own country.