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escape

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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See also: escapé

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Etymology

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.

Pronunciation

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.
    The prisoners escaped by jumping over a wall.
    The factory was evacuated after toxic gases escaped from a pipe.
  2. (transitive) 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.
    • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
      sailors that escaped the wreck
    • 1958 November, “Storm Damage in the Home Counties”, in Railway Magazine, page 746:
      In the Southern Region of British Railways, most of the damage was caused by earthslips which blocked one or both roads. Obstructions occurred at 21 places in the London Eastern District, and at 18 places in London Central District. On the other hand, the London Western District escaped comparatively lightly.
    • 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.
    • 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; […].
  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.
    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.
    • 2025 November 26, Philip Haigh, “Just who will be behind GBR's directing mind?”, in RAIL, number 1049, page 56:
      Quite why a passenger from Reading would choose to reach London via Guildford rather than using Great Western Railway's frequent and fast direct services escapes me - […] .
  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.
    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.
    • 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, 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, 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.
  6. (computing) To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.

Usage notes

Synonyms

Hyponyms

Hyponyms from the verb and noun "escape"

Derived terms

Terms derived from the verb and noun "escape"

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Noun

escape (countable and uncountable, plural escapes)

  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.
    • 2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 124:
      But what about the flocks of Waxbills? Are they escapes gone feral, or are they spreading from Africa?
  4. A holiday, viewed as time away from the vicissitudes of life.
  5. (computing) escape key
  6. (programming) The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal).
    You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream.
  7. (snooker) A successful shot from a snooker position.
  8. (manufacturing) A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.
  9. (obsolete) That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression.
  10. (obsolete) A sally.
  11. (architecture) An apophyge.
  12. (botany) A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some agency.

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

References

Anagrams

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Asturian

Etymology

From escapar.

Noun

escape m (plural escapes)

  1. escape

French

Pronunciation

Adjective

escape (plural escapes)

  1. escape

Noun

escape f (plural escapes)

  1. (architecture) escape

Further reading

Galician

Etymology

From escapar.

Noun

escape m (plural escapes)

  1. escape

Verb

escape

  1. inflection of escapar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Further reading

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from English escape.

Noun

escape m (invariable)

  1. (computing) the escape key

Portuguese

Pronunciation

 

  • Rhymes: -api, -apɨ
  • Hyphenation: es‧ca‧pe

Etymology 1

Deverbal from escapar.

Noun

escape m (plural escapes)

  1. escape
  2. (Portugal) clipping of tubo de escape

Etymology 2

Verb

escape

  1. inflection of escapar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Further reading

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Spanish

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /esˈkape/ [esˈka.pe]
  • Rhymes: -ape
  • Syllabification: es‧ca‧pe

Etymology 1

Deverbal from escapar.

Noun

escape m (plural escapes)

  1. escape
  2. leak
    Synonym: fuga
  3. exhaust pipe, tailpipe
    Synonym: tubo de escape
Derived terms

Etymology 2

Verb

escape

  1. inflection of escapar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Further reading

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