refoulement
/ɹəˌfulˈmɑn/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.62 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The involuntary sending of refugees or asylum seekers to their country of origin or another one, where they are likely to face persecution and harm.
Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "He also expressed concern that at the same time there could be cases of refoulement with asylum seekers being returned to their countries of origin, where they are at risk of persecution and in an apparent breach of international law."
Etymology
Borrowed from French refoulement (“act of pushing something back (as gunpowder into a gun barrel, or water by a dam); act of water overflowing; forced relocation of a group of people; forced repatriation of asylum-seekers or refugees”), from refouler (“to cause to flow or turn back; to repress, suppress; to repulse; to trample on again”) (from re- (prefix meaning ‘again’) + fouler (“to impress, stamp; to trample, walk on; to mistreat, oppress”) (ultimately from Medieval Latin fullare (“to make cloth denser and firmer by soaking, beating and pressing, to full”), from Latin fullō (“one who fulls cloth, fuller”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“to blow; to inflate, swell”)) + -ment (suffix forming nouns from verbs, usually denoting resulting actions or states).
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
- Root: *bʰleh₃-, refoulement, fullare, fullō
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɹəˌfulˈmɑn/
- British English: /ɹəˈfuːlmɒ̃/