dispossession

/ˌdɪspəˈzɛʃən/

Other forms: dispossessions

Dispossession is a state of having something taken away from you, particularly your home or land. If a city demolishes houses to build a new highway, it's a kind of dispossession for the people who lived in them.

Possession, or "the fact of owning or occupying," is at the heart of dispossession. The prefix dis- means "not," and this word describes the state of no longer having something that was previously held or possessed. Historians often describe the dispossession of many Indigenous people across North America when colonial settlers seized the land where their ancestors had lived, and they were forced to migrate.

Definitions of dispossession

1. noun

   the expulsion of someone (such as a tenant) from the possession of land by process of law
   synonyms: eviction, legal ouster

   types:

   ouster

   a wrongful dispossession

   actual eviction

   the physical ouster of a tenant from the leased premises; the tenant is relieved of any further duty to pay rent

   retaliatory eviction

   an eviction in reprisal for the tenant's good-faith complaints against the landlord; illegal in many states

   type of:

   due process, due process of law

   (law) the administration of justice according to established rules and principles; based on the principle that a person cannot be deprived of life or liberty or property without appropriate legal procedures and safeguards
2. noun

   freeing from evil spirits
   synonyms: exorcism

   type of:

   supernaturalism

   a belief in forces beyond ordinary human understanding