escape

The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation.

Noun

  1. The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation.
    • The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel.
  2. Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation.
  3. Something that has escaped; an escapee.
    • But what about the flocks of Waxbills? Are they escapes gone feral, or are they spreading from Africa? - 2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 124:
  4. A holiday, viewed as time away from the vicissitudes of life.
  5. escape key
  6. The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal).
    • You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream.
  7. A successful shot from a snooker position.
  8. A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.
  9. That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression.
    • I should have been more accurate, corrected all those former escapes. - 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James...
  10. A sally.
    • thousand escapes of wit - c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  11. An apophyge.
  12. A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some agency.

Origin

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.

Forms

escapes

Derived

garden escape pump escape

Verb

  1. 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.
  2. 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 - c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  3. To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
    • Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.
  4. 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.
  5. 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. - 1998 August, Tim Berners-Lee et al., Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI):...
  6. To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.

Forms

escapes escaping escaped

Synonyms

break loose take it on the lam

Hyponyms

atmospheric escape bee escape emergency escape fire escape fork escape garden escape immunoescape Jeans escape narrow escape reescape unescape vaccine escape

Derived

escapable escape artist escape artistry escape character escape clause escape cock escapee escape fire escape goat escape hatch escape key escapeland escapeless escape literature escape mechanism escapement escape pipe escape pod escaper escape rhythm escape road escape room escape route escape routine