Word.ws English Dictionary

make away

make away verb: to depart, leave; to make off.

Verb

make away (third-person singular simple present makes away, present participle making away, simple past and past participle made away)

  1. (intransitive, obsolete) To depart, leave; to make off.
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To destroy.
  3. (obsolete, transitive) To kill.
    • By him that dide for me, I wil not dine,
      Till I haue ſeene thee hangd or made away.1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act III
    • If a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To get rid of, dispose of.
    • ‘Will you,’ said he, ‘on your honour, let me see them uncurtailed, and not offer to make them away; no, not a single paper?’1740, Samuel Richardson, Pamela, volume II
  5. (obsolete, reflexive) To kill oneself, commit suicide.
    • the people impatient of so many changes of fortune, tooke such a resolution unto death, that I have heard my father say, he kept accompt of five and twentie chiefe housholders, that in one weeke made them-selves away[…].1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 40, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
    • Hostratus the friar took that book which Reuchlin had written against him, under the name of Epist. obscurorum vivorum, so to heart, that for shame and grief he made away himself., New York Review of Books, 2001, p.263

Forms of make away

third-person singular presentmakes away
present participlemaking away
past participlemade away
pastmade away

Words formed from make away

Questions about make away

What does make away mean?
Make away means to depart, leave; to make off.
What part of speech is make away?
Make away is a verb.
What is the past tense of make away?
The past tense of make away is made away.

Words near make away in the dictionary

  1. make an impression
  2. make an offer
  3. make and mend
  4. make and mends
  5. make as if
  6. make away
  7. make away with
  8. make baby Jesus cry
  9. make bank
  10. make beautiful music together
  11. make belief

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make away (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.

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