escape.
To get free; to free oneself.
Meaning & usage
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 break out of confinement.
The prisoners escaped their cell.
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.
To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.
To avoid responsibilities and stresses for a time.
Work was stressful, and I needed to escape.
To be forgotten by.
I used to know the name of the capital of France, but it escapes me now.
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.
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.
To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.
To grow wild, instead of in a cultivated area.
You have to be careful planting mint, or it will escape and take over your yard.
To express, especially involuntarily.
I tried to look disappointed, but a smile escaped me.
Where this word comes from
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.
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 insulation.
Something that has escaped; an escapee.
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; a mistake, oversight, or transgression.
A sally.
An apophyge.
A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some agency.
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.