displacement

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The act of displacing.
• noun The condition of having been displaced.
• noun Chemistry A reaction in which an atom, radical, ion, or molecule replaces another in a compound.
• noun A vector or the magnitude of a vector from the initial position to a subsequent position assumed by a body.
• noun The weight or volume of a fluid displaced by a floating body, used especially as a measurement of the weight or bulk of ships.
• noun The volume displaced by a single stroke of a piston in an engine or pump.
• noun The relative movement between the two sides of a fault.
• noun The distance between the two sides of a fault.
• noun Psychiatry A psychological defense mechanism in which there is an unconscious shift of emotions, affect, or desires from the original object to a more acceptable or immediate substitute.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun In veg. teratol., a malformation, in leaves, due to abnormal cohesion or fusion of parts which results in dislocation and other apparent changes in the form. Thus two fused leaves may appear like a single lobed leaf, a whorl may be reduced to two opposite leaves, etc.
• noun A putting out of place; removal from a former or usual or proper place, or from a position, dignity, or office.
• noun A putting in the place of another or of something else; substitution in place; replacement by exchange.
• noun In hydrostatics, the quantity of a liquid which is displaced by a solid body placed in it.
• noun In pharmacy, a method by which the active principles of organic bodies are extracted from them.
• noun In mech., the geometrical difference or exact relation between the position of a body at any moment and its initial position.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.
• noun The quantity of anything, as water, displaced by a floating body, as by a ship, the weight of the displaced liquid being equal to that of the displacing body.
• noun (Chem.) The process of extracting soluble substances from organic material and the like, whereby a quantity of saturated solvent is displaced, or removed, for another quantity of the solvent.
• noun (Mech.) the volume of the space swept through, or weight of steam, water, etc., displaced, in a given time, by the piston of a steam engine or pump.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun The act of displacing, or the state of being displaced; a putting out of place.
• noun The quantity of anything, as water, displaced by a floating body, as by a ship, the weight of the displaced liquid being equal to that of the displacing body.
• noun chemistry The process of extracting soluble substances from organic material and the like, whereby a quantity of saturated solvent is displaced, or removed, for another quantity of the solvent.
• noun fencing Moving the target to avoid an attack; dodging.
• noun physics A vector quantity which denotes distance with a directional component.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun act of taking the place of another especially using underhanded tactics
• noun to move something from its natural environment
• noun (chemistry) a reaction in which an elementary substance displaces and sets free a constituent element from a compound
• noun an event in which something is displaced without rotation
• noun act of removing from office or employment
• noun the act of uniform movement
• noun (psychiatry) a defense mechanism that transfers affect or reaction from the original object to some more acceptable one