Deplacement

Deplacement (often written displacement in English; French: déplacement) is a term used across disciplines to describe a change of position or location. In physics, displacement is a vector quantity defined as the straight-line difference between an object's initial position and its final position. If r_initial and r_final denote these positions, displacement Δr = r_final − r_initial. It has a magnitude and a direction, and its SI unit is the meter. A key property is path independence: displacement depends only on where motion starts and ends, not on the path taken. Consequently, displacement differs from distance traveled, which sums the lengths of the path.

In practical use, displacement appears in contexts such as navigation, robotics, and computer graphics, where it describes a translation of an object in space. In everyday language, deplacement or déplacement can refer to travel or a journey, such as a business trip or a relocation. In social sciences and disaster studies, displacement also denotes the forced movement of people or communities due to conflict, natural disasters, or development-related projects.

The term originates from the French déplacement, from dis- + placer, meaning to place apart. See also distance, velocity, and translation.