escape
verbEtymology
From Middle English escapen, from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French escaper ( = Old French eschaper, modern French échapper), from Vulgar Latin *excappāre (“to escape a garment, get out of one's clothing”, literally “to free oneself from one's cape”), from Latin ex- (“out”) + Late Latin cappa (“cape, cloak”). Cognate with escapade. Also doublet of scape.
Definitions
To get free
To get free; to free oneself.
- The prisoners escaped by jumping over a wall.
- The factory was evacuated after toxic gases escaped from a pipe.
To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing)
To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from.
- He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail.
- The children climbed out of the window to escape the fire.
- sailors that escaped the wreck
To avoid capture
To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
- Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.
›+ 15 more definitionsshow fewer
To elude the observation or notice of
To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by.
- The name of the hotel escapes me at present.
- The detective examined the crime scene, but one clue escaped his notice.
- c. 1698-1699 (year published) Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs They escaped the search of the enemy.
To cause (a single character, or all such characters in a string) to be interpreted…
To cause (a single character, or all such characters in a string) to be interpreted literally, instead of with any special meaning it would usually have in the same context, often by prefixing with another character.
- When using the "bash" shell, you can escape the ampersand character with a backslash.
- Brion escaped the double quote character on Windows by adding a second double quote within the literal.
- If the data for a URI component would conflict with the reserved purpose, then the conflicting data must be escaped before forming the URI.
To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of…
To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.
The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation.
- The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel.
Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective…
Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation.
Something that has escaped
Something that has escaped; an escapee.
- But what about the flocks of Waxbills? Are they escapes gone feral, or are they spreading from Africa?
A holiday, viewed as time away from the vicissitudes of life.
escape key
The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal).
- You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream.
A successful shot from a snooker position.
A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.
That which escapes attention or restraint
That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression.
- I should have been more accurate, corrected all those former escapes.
A sally.
- thousand escapes of wit
An apophyge.
A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some agency.
The neighborhood
- synonymbreak loose
- synonymtake it on the lam
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
A definitional loop anchored at escape. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.
A definitional loop anchored at escape. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.
9 hops · closes at escape
curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA