escape
Syllables: es·capeUK/ɪˈskeɪp//ɪˈskeɪp/
escape verb: to get free; to free oneself.
Verb
escape (third-person singular simple present escapes, present participle escaping, simple past and past participle escaped)
- 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.
Noun
escape (countable and uncountable, plural escapes)
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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 Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC
- A sally.
- thousand escapes of witc. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
- An apophyge.
- A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some agency.
escape meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
escape in Hindi
- act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation
- पलायन palāyan
escape in Tamil
- to get free; to free oneself
- தப்பி tappi
escape in Marathi
- act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation
- सुटका suṭkā
- computing: escape key
- एस्केप eskep
- programming: ASCII character
- एस्केप eskep
escape in Urdu
- act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation
- فَرار farār
More languagesFewer languages
- escape in Bengali
- মুক্তি mukti
- escape in Telugu
- పలాయనము palāyanamu
- escape in Malayalam
- കയ്ച്ചിലാവുക kayccilāvuka, രക്ഷ rakṣa
- escape in Kannada
- ಪಾರು, ಸಳ್ಳು, ತಪ್ಪಿಸಿಕೊಳ್ಳು, ಪಾರಾಗುವಿಕೆ
- escape in Punjabi
- ਭਾਂਜ bhāñj, بچنا bacṇā
- escape in Gujarati
- બચવું bacvũ, સટવું saṭvũ, સટકવું saṭakvũ, ટળવું ṭaḷvũ
- escape in Sanskrit
- सिसर्ति sisarti
- escape in Assamese
- পলা pola, ভাগ bhag, সাৰ xar
- escape in Nepali
- बाँच्नु bā̃cnu
- escape in Tagalog
- takas, pagtakas
- escape in Arabic
- هَرَبَ haraba, فِرَار firār, هُرُوب hurūb, هَرَب harab
- escape in Malay
- lari
- escape in Indonesian
- kabur
- escape in Persian
- فرار کردن farâr kardan, گریختن gorixtan
- escape in Thai
- หนี nǐi, หลบหลีก lòp-lìik, หลบหนี lòp-nǐi
- escape in Vietnamese
- thoát, trốn thoát, trốn khỏi, tránh
Examples of escape in a sentence
- On the other hand, the London Western District escaped comparatively lightly.1958 November, “Storm Damage in the Home Counties”, in Railway Magazine, page 746:
- 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 - […].2025 November 26, Philip Haigh, “Just who will be behind GBR's directing mind?”, in RAIL, number 1049, page 56:
- 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): Generic Syntax (RFC 2396), page 8
- Character Data tags allow you to place complex strings as the text of an element—without the need to manually escape the string.2002, Scott Worley, “Using XML in ASP.NET Applications”, in Inside ASP.NET, →ISBN, page 214:
Synonyms of escape
Forms of escape
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | escapes |
| present participle | escaping |
| past participle | escaped |
| past | escaped |
| Noun | |
| plural | escapes |
Origin of escape
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.
Words formed from escape
- 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
- escape sequence
- escape shaft
- escape tone
- escape valve
- escape velocity
- escapeway
- escape wheel
- escapingly
- escapism
- escapist
- escapologist
- escapology
- fire-escape knot
- inescapable
- garden escape
- pump escape
Phrases with escape
Words that rhyme with escape
21 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about escape
- What does escape mean?
- Escape means to get free; to free oneself.
- What is escape in Hindi?
- Escape in Hindi is पलायन (palāyan). See Escape meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use escape in a sentence?
- On the other hand, the London Western District escaped comparatively lightly.
- What part of speech is escape?
- Escape can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce escape?
- Escape is pronounced /ɪˈskeɪp/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of escape?
- The past tense of escape is escaped.
Words near escape in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: escape (page history and authors); মুক্তি (Bengali) (page history and authors); കയ്ച്ചിലാവുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); escape (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); بچنا (Punjabi) (page history and authors); ટળવું (Gujarati) (page history and authors); बाँच्नु (Nepali) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-escape.wav.
Cite this entry: “escape.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/escape. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.