escape

Etymology

From Middle English escapen, 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”) + Late Latin cappa (“cape, cloak”). Cognate with escapade.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɪˈskeɪp/, (proscribed) /ɪk-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ɪˈskeɪp/, /ə-/, /ɛ-/, (proscribed) /ɛk-/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: es‧cape
• Rhymes: -eɪp

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.
   • 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

   • 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; […].

   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.

   • c. 1698-1699 (year published) Edmund Ludlow, Memoirs

     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, 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.

   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.

Noun

escape (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.
   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:

     I should have been more accurate, corrected all those former escapes.

10. (obsolete) A sally.
    • 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] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:

      thousand escapes of wit

11. (architecture) An apophyge.

References

• “escape”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “escape”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Escape in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

Anagrams

• Peaces, espace, peaces

Etymology

From escapar.

Noun

escape m (plural escapes)

1. escape

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Adjective

escape (plural escapes)

1. escape

Noun

escape f (plural escapes)

1. (architecture) escape

Related terms

• échapper
• escapade
• escaper

Further reading

• “escape”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

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

• “escape”, in Dicionario da Real Academia Galega (in Galician), A Coruña: Royal Galician Academy, 2012–2024

Etymology

Borrowed from English escape.

Noun

escape m (invariable)

1. (computing) the escape key

Pronunciation

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

Etymology 1

Deverbal from escapar.

Etymology 2

Further reading

• “escape”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2024

Pronunciation

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

Etymology 1

Deverbal from escapar.

Etymology 2

Further reading

• “escape”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10