transmigration

Borrowed from Latin trānsmigrātiō.

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transmigration (countable and uncountable, plural transmigrations)

1. Departure from one's homeland to live in another country; migration.
2. A change from one state of existence to another.
   • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VII, in Romance and Reality. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 109:

     Any great change is like cold water in winter—one shrinks from the first plunge; and a lover may be excused who shivers a little at the transmigration into a husband.

3. The movement of a soul from one body to another after death.

   Near-synonyms: metempsychosis, reincarnation (both broadly synonymous)

   • 1769, Firishta, translated by Alexander Dow, Tales translated from the Persian of Inatulla of Delhi, volume I, Dublin: P. and W. Wilson et al., page 12:

     The curioſity of the lady was highly inflamed, to know the hiſtory of the parrot's tranſmigration, which ſhe intreated the bird with all her eloquence to relate; but he preſented a deaf ear to her importunity, and, like a painted nightingale, remained ſilent.

   • 1776, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol I, ch 1-pt i:

     To the strength and fierceness of barbarians they [the Dacians] added a contempt for life, which was derived from a warm persuasion of the immortality and transmigration of the soul.

• “transmigration”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

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transmigration f (plural transmigrations)

1. transmigration

• “transmigration”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012