migrate

Etymology

From Latin migratus, past participle of migrō (“migrate, change, transport”).

verb

1. (intransitive) To relocate periodically from one region to another, usually according to the seasons.
   Twice a year the geese migrate — from Florida to Canada and back again.
   Twice a year the Minnesotans migrate from their state to the Gulf of Mexico.
2. (intransitive) To change one's geographic pattern of habitation.
   Many groups had migrated to western Europe from the plains of eastern Europe.
3. (intransitive) To change habitations across a border; to move from one country or political region to another.
   To escape persecution, they migrated to a neutral country.
   Little is more extraordinary than the decision to migrate, little more extraordinary than the accumulation of emotions and thoughts which finally leads a family to say farewell to a community where it has lived for centuries, to abandon old ties and familiar landmarks, and to sail across dark seas to a strange land. 1964, John F. Kennedy, “Why They Came”, in A Nation of Immigrants, Revised and Enlarged edition, Harper & Row, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 4
4. (intransitive) To move slowly towards, usually in groups.
   Once the hosts started bickering in the kitchens, the guests began to migrate towards the living room.
5. (transitive, computing): To move computer code or files from one computer or network to another.
   They had finished migrating all of the affected code to the production server by 2:00am, three hours later than expected.
6. (transitive, marketing) To induce customers to shift purchases from one set of a company's related products to another.
   We were hoping to migrate the customers of the "C" series to the "E" series and the "E" customers to the "S" series.