escape

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See also: escapé

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
Pelicans escaping from slamming wave

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

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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      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.

Usage notes

Synonyms

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.

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: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:
      I should have been more accurate, corrected all those former escapes.
  10. (obsolete) A sally.
  11. (architecture) An apophyge.

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.

References

Anagrams

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

Related terms

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

Spanish

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /esˈkape/
  • 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
Related terms

Etymology 2

Verb

escape

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

Further reading