noun
- (usually initial capital letter) the scattering of the Jews to countries outside of Palestine after the Babylonian captivity.
- (often initial capital letter) the body of Jews living in countries outside Israel.
- (often initial capital letter) such countries collectively: the return of the Jews from the Diaspora.
- any group migration or flight from a country or region.
- any group that has been dispersed outside its traditional homeland, especially involuntarily, as Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
- any religious group living as a minority among people of the prevailing religion.
- the spread or dissemination of something originally confined to a local, homogeneous group, as a language or cultural institution: the diaspora of English as a global language.
noun
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- the dispersion of the Jews after the Babylonian and Roman conquests of Palestine
- the Jewish communities outside Israel
- the Jews living outside Israel
- the extent of Jewish settlement outside Israel
- (in the New Testament) the body of Christians living outside Palestine
- (often not capital) a dispersion or spreading, as of people originally belonging to one nation or having a common culture
- Caribbean the descendants of Sub-Saharan African peoples living anywhere in the Western hemisphere
1876, from Greek diaspora “dispersion,” from diaspeirein “to scatter about, disperse,” from dia- “about, across” (see dia-) + speirein “to scatter” (see sprout). The Greek word was used in Septuagint in Deut. xxviii:25. A Hebrew word for it is galuth “exile.” Related: Diasporic.