WORD: Hegira

noun

Any flight or journey to a more desirable or congenial place.

ORIGIN

Hegira, “a flight to a more desirable or safer place,” comes from Medieval Latin hegira, a Latinization of Arabic hijrah “emigration, flight, departure,” a derivative of the verb hajara “he departed.” Hijrah specifically refers to the flight of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution in July c.e. 622. The Arabic form hijrah (more fully al hijrat) for Muslims marks the beginning of the Muslim Era. Hegira entered English in the late 16th century; the spelling hijra in the late 19th.

USAGE

After The San Francisco News assigned [John] Steinbeck to write a series about the pathetic living conditions of the Dust Bowl refugees in California’s San Joaquin Valley, he actively began The Grapes of Wrath, his touching 1939 novel about the hegira of these Oklahoma sharecroppers.

BRENDA WINEAPPLE, "JOHN STEINBECK, BARD OF THE AMERICAN WORKER," NEW YORK TIMES, OCTOBER 6, 2020
[T. S.] Eliot’s hegira from starchy student to the Nobel laureate who packed out baseball stadiums on an American tour remains one of the most compelling and strange of modern poetic careers.

DAVID WHEATLEY, "THE POEMS OF T.S. ELIOT: THE ANNOTATED TEXT REVIEW–A MONUMENTAL ACHIEVEMENT," THE GUARDIAN, NOVEMBER 13, 2015