WORD of the day

hegira \he-JAY-ruh\, noun:

1. A journey to a more desirable or congenial place.
2. The flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution a.d. 622: regarded as the beginning of the Muslim Era.
I do not mean to suggest a back-to-the-future hegira to a mythical golden age of wise and benevolent institutions, canonical disciplines, and noble professions but rather a reinvigoration of our disciplines, institutions, and professions around what we do not know about how we should think.
-- Michael Joyce, "Interspace: Our Commonly Valued Unknowing", Academic Commons
With a sublime indifference to popular superstition, or rather because they did not think of it till all their arrangements were completed, the Misses Leaf had accomplished their grand hegira on a Friday. Consequently, their first day at No. 15 was Sunday.
-- Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Mistress and maid, Volume 1

Hegira, whether referring to the event in the history of Islam or a general sense of the word, comes from the Arabic hajara, "to depart."