self-exile
self-exile noun: a voluntary exile; One who chooses to leave their homeland or community.
Noun
self-exile (countable and uncountable, plural self-exiles)
- A voluntary exile; One who chooses to leave their homeland or community.
- One source for the views of certain of these self-exiles is the newsletter of the Union of American Exiles, American Exile in Canada, published in Toronto for at least two years (1968 and 1969).2004, Michael Hanne, Creativity in Exile - Volume 1, page 116
- Indeed, in looking to Pound, Eliot and Stein, self-exiles all, he looks more to London and Paris than across the ocean.2011, Scott Lyall -, Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmid, page 137
- The state of voluntary exile; The condition of choosing to leave one's homeland or community.
- Self-exile to a convent residence was the traditionally dignified solution for an injured wife of her class.2000, Laurence L. Bongie, Sade: A Biographical Essay, page 212
- He did not return to his "great idea" until the summer of 1795, when his self-exile in Osmannstadt freed him from the day-to-day demands of lecturing and allowed him to devote several months to preparing a new course on natural law.2001, Anthony J. LaVopa, Fichte: The Self and the Calling of Philosophy, 1762-1799, page 298
- Isolation from the world; A retreat from involvement with one's environment.
- Chang's self-exile, however, aroused rather than thwarted her readers' desire; and they consumed anecdotes and hearsay about her life as eagerly as they did any of her works.1998, Eileen Chang, Ailing Zhang, The Rice Sprout Song, page xi
- He resolved that this would be his last appearance on the political stage. Following his return to Buenos Aires, Mercante entered what his friend Rudolfo Decker would later describe as a period of “self-exile,” a self-imposed abstention from politics that would last until his death.2005, Carolyn A. Becker, Domingo A. Mercante: A Democrat in the Shadow of Perón and Evita
- A separation or alienation from ones inner self.
- The autobiographical gesture, writing the word “I,” is a move into self-exile or even self-extinction.2008, John T Hamilton, Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language, page 91
- Part of the crisis and difficulty in this understanding is that we lose sense of ourselves and our communities together, in one and the same movement of self-exile from shared words and shared expressions.2011, Sarah Beckwith, Shakespeare and the Grammar of Forgiveness, page 9
Verb
self-exile (third-person singular simple present self-exiles, present participle self-exiling, simple past and past participle self-exiled)
- To go into self-exile.
- The agreement provided that Aguinaldo and his officers and men would self-exile abroad; Primo de Rivera will pay the rebels ₱800,000.00 in three installments until all the rebel soldiers would have surrendered; amnesty would be given to all those who would surrender; and an additional ₱900,000.00...2008, Cecilio D. Duka, Struggle for Freedom, page 154
- If noticed, some will self-exile and accuse the government wrongfully without adequate reasons and are never extradited to face the justice against the crime they have committed and will be seen as African self-exiles (ASE).2010, Amadou Sambou, African Rural Darkness, page 60
Examples of self-exile in a sentence
- Such an imposed isolation leads her to live in a cold and affectionless environment of self-exile and alienation.2016, Kaptan Singh, Women in Exile and Alienation, page 78:
- How odd that Mabuse scampers off to South America to establish his new life, where the Nazis would self-exile themselves at the end of the war.2015, David Kalat, The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse:
Forms of self-exile
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | self-exiles |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | self-exiles |
| present participle | self-exiling |
| past participle | self-exiled |
| past | self-exiled |
Questions about self-exile
- What does self-exile mean?
- Self-exile means a voluntary exile; One who chooses to leave their homeland or community.
- How do you use self-exile in a sentence?
- Such an imposed isolation leads her to live in a cold and affectionless environment of self-exile and alienation.
- What part of speech is self-exile?
- Self-exile can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of self-exile?
- The plural of self-exile is self-exiles.
Words near self-exile in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: self-exile (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “self-exile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self-exile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.