exodus

UK/ˈɛksədəs/US/ˈɛksədəs/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,154 of 15,258leans written

An exodus is a mass departure of people from a place. A steady exodus from the countryside.

It suggests a great many leaving over a period rather than one crowd on one day. The word comes from the biblical book of that name and has kept some of its weight.

Definitions of exodus

1nounexodusA mass departure of people from a place.C1
“The exodus from the villages emptied three schools in a decade.”

exodus is a departure.

Where it comes from

Greek exodos means a going out, from ex plus hodos, a road.

Ancient Greek
ἔξοδος
Latin
exodus
English, today
exodus

From Latin exodus, from Ancient Greek ἔξοδος. From Latin exodus, from Ancient Greek ἔξοδος (“expedition, procession, departure”). a doublet of exodos. From late Old English only as a proper noun, Exodus, the biblical book; use as a common noun is from the early 17th century.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

exodus in the wild

The first large-scale exoduses took place in the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from Iraq, Yemen, and Libya.
Jewish exodus from the Muslim world
The Stations of the Exodus are the locations visited by the Israelites following their exodus from Egypt, according to the Hebrew Bible.
Stations of the Exodus
At the time of their exodus, very few Pandits expected their exile to last beyond a few months.
Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus
When, however, the exodus reached such proportions as to demand serious attention, steps were at once taken to ascertain its volume.
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921· Various

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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