Definify.com

Webster 1913 Edition

Escape

Es-cape′

,
Verb.
T.
[
imp. & p. p.
Escaped
;
p. pr. & vb. n.
Escaping
.]
[OE.
escapen
,
eschapen
, OF.
escaper
,
eschaper
, F.
echapper
, fr. LL.
ex cappa
out of one’s cape or cloak; hence, to slip out of one's cape and escape. See 3d
Cape
, and cf.
Scape
,
Verb.
]
1.
To flee from and avoid; to be saved or exempt from; to shun; to obtain security from;
as, to
escape
danger
.
“Sailors that escaped the wreck.”
Shak.
2.
To avoid the notice of; to pass unobserved by; to evade;
as, the fact
escaped
our attention
.
They
escaped
the search of the enemy.
Ludlow.

Es-cape′

,
Verb.
I.
1.
To flee, and become secure from danger; – often followed by from or out of.
Haste, for thy life
escape
, nor look behind[GREEK][GREEK]
Keble.
2.
To get clear from danger or evil of any form; to be passed without harm.
Such heretics . . . would have been thought fortunate, if they
escaped
with life.
Macaulay.
3.
To get free from that which confines or holds; – used of persons or things;
as, to
escape
from prison, from arrest, or from slavery; gas
escapes
from the pipes; electricity
escapes
from its conductors.
To
escape
out of these meshes.
Thackeray.

Es-cape′

,
Noun.
1.
The act of fleeing from danger, of evading harm, or of avoiding notice; deliverance from injury or any evil; flight;
as, an
escape
in battle; a narrow
escape
; also, the means of escape;
as, a fire
escape
.
I would hasten my
escape
from the windy storm.
Ps. lv. 8.
2.
That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake; an oversight; also, transgression.
[Obs.]
I should have been more accurate, and corrected all those former
escapes
.
Burton.
3.
A sally.
“Thousand escapes of wit.”
Shak.
4.
(Law)
The unlawful permission, by a jailer or other custodian, of a prisoner's departure from custody.
☞ Escape is technically distinguishable from prison breach, which is the unlawful departure of the prisoner from custody, escape being the permission of the departure by the custodian, either by connivance or negligence. The term escape, however, is applied by some of the old authorities to a departure from custody by stratagem, or without force.
Wharton.
5.
(Arch.)
An apophyge.
6.
Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid.
7.
(Elec.)
Leakage or loss of currents from the conducting wires, caused by defective insulation.
Escape pipe
(Steam Boilers)
,
a pipe for carrying away steam that escapes through a safety valve.
–
Escape valve
(Steam Engine)
,
a relief valve; a safety valve. See under
Relief
, and
Safety
.
–
Escape wheel
(Horol.)
,
the wheel of an escapement.

Webster 1828 Edition

Escape

ESCA'PE

,
Verb.
T.
[L. capio, with a negative prefix, or from a word of the same family.]
1.
To flee from and avoid; to get out of the way; to shun; to obtain security from; to pass without harm; as, to escape danger.
A small number, that escape the sword, shall return. Jer.44.
Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. 2 Pet.1.
2.
To pass unobserved; to evade; as, the fact escaped my notice or observation.
3.
To avoid the danger of; as, to escape the sea. Act.28.
Note. This verb is properly intransitive, and in strictness should be followed by from; but usage sanctions the omission of it.

ESCA'PE

,
Verb.
I.
To flee, shun and be secure from danger; to avoid an evil.
Escape for thy life to the mountains. Gen.19.
1.
To be passed without harm. The balls whistled by me, my comrades fell, but I escaped.

ESCA'PE

,
Noun.
Flight to shun danger or injury; the act of fleeing from danger.
I would hasten my escape from the windy storm. Ps.55.
1.
A being passed without receiving injury, as when danger comes near a person, but passes by, and the person is passive. Every soldier who survives a battle has had such an escape.
2.
Excuse; subterfuge; evasion.
3.
In law, an evasion of legal restraint or the custody of the sheriff, without due course of law. Escapes are voluntary or involuntary; voluntary, when an officer permits an offender or debtor to quit his custody, without warrant; and involuntary, or negligent, when an arrested person quits the custody of the officer against his will, and is not pursued forthwith and retaken before the pursuer hath lost sight of him.
4.
Sally; flight; irregularity. [Little used.]
5.
Oversight; mistake. [Little used, or improper.]

Definition 2024

escape

escape

See also: escapé

English

Pelicans escaping from slamming wave

Verb

escape ‎(third-person singular simple present escapes, present participle escaping, simple past and past participle escaped)

  1. (intransitive) To get free, to free oneself.
    • 2013 June 7, David Simpson, “Fantasy of navigation”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 26, page 36:
      It is tempting to speculate about the incentives or compulsions that might explain why anyone would take to the skies in [the] basket [of a balloon]: perhaps out of a desire to escape the gravity of this world or to get a preview of the next; […].
    The prisoners escaped by jumping over a wall.‎
  2. (transitive) To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from.
    • Shakespeare
      sailors that escaped the wreck
    • 2011 March 1, Phil McNulty, “Chelsea 2-1 Man Utd”, in BBC:
      Luiz was Chelsea's stand-out performer, although Ferguson also had a case when he questioned how the £21m defender escaped a red card after the break for a hack at Rooney, with the Brazilian having already been booked.
    He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail.‎
    The children climbed out of the window to escape the fire.‎
  3. (intransitive) To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
    Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.‎
  4. (transitive) To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by.
    The name of the hotel escapes me at present.‎
    • Ludlow
      They escaped the search of the enemy.
  5. (transitive, computing) 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.
    • 1998 August, Tim Berners-Lee et al., Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax (RFC 2396), page 8:
      If the data for a URI component would conflict with the reserved purpose, then the conflicting data must be escaped before forming the URI.
    • 2002, Scott Worley, “Using XML in ASP.NET Applications”, in Inside ASP.NET, ISBN 0735711356, page 214:
      Character Data tags allow you to place complex strings as the text of an element—without the need to manually escape the string.
    • 2007, Michael Cross, “Code Auditing and Reverse Engineering”, in Developer's Guide to Web Application Security, ISBN 159749061X, page 213:
      Therefore, what follows is a list of typical output functions; your job is to determine if any of the functions print out tainted data that has not been passed through some sort of HTML escaping function.
    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.‎
  6. (computing) To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.

Usage notes

  • In senses 2. and 3. this is a catenative verb that takes the gerund (-ing). See Appendix:English catenative verbs

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

escape ‎(plural escapes)

  1. The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation.
    The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel.
  2. (computing) escape key
  3. (programming) The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal).
    You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream.
  4. (snooker) A successful shot from a snooker position.
  5. (manufacturing) A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.
  6. (obsolete) That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression.
    • Burton
      I should have been more accurate, and corrected all those former escapes.
  7. Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation.
  8. (obsolete) A sally.
    • Shakespeare
      thousand escapes of wit
  9. (architecture) An apophyge.

Translations

Statistics

Most common English words before 1923: Hart · social · shown · #924: escape · Mr · shot · warm

Anagrams

Asturian

Noun

escape m ‎(plural escapes)

  1. escape

Related terms

Galician

Verb

escape

  1. first-person singular present subjunctive of escapar
  2. third-person singular present subjunctive of escapar

Italian

Noun

escape m ‎(invariable)

  1. (computing) The escape key

Portuguese

Pronunciation

  • Rhymes: -api

Verb

escape

  1. First-person singular (eu) affirmative imperative of escapar
  2. Third-person singular (você) affirmative imperative of escapar
  3. First-person singular (eu) negative imperative of escapar
  4. Third-person singular (você) negative imperative of escapar
  5. First-person singular (eu) present subjunctive of escapar
  6. Third-person singular (ele, ela, also used with tu and você?) present subjunctive of escapar

Spanish

Noun

escape m ‎(plural escapes)

  1. escape
  2. leak
  3. exhaust pipe, tailpipe

Synonyms

Related terms

Verb

escape

  1. Formal second-person singular (usted) imperative form of escapar.
  2. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of escapar.
  3. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of escapar.
  4. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted?) present subjunctive form of escapar.

Etymology

From Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French escaper ( = Old French eschaper, modern French échapper), from Vulgar Latin *excappāre, literally "get out of one's cape, leave a pursuer with just one's cape," from Latin ex- ‎(“out”) + cappa ‎(“cape, cloak”).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɪˈskeɪp/, /əˈskeɪp/, /ɛˈskeɪp/
  • Rhymes: -eɪp

Similar Results