escape
/ɪˈskeɪp/ verb B1- 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.
He/she/it escapes · Past escaped · Past participle escaped · -ing form escaping
Verb forms
- Base form
- escape
- He/she/it
- escapes
- Past
- escaped
- Past participle
- escaped
- -ing form
- escaping
From the library
## XXI ESCAPE AT BEDTIME
“That _was_ a narrow escape!” said Alice, a good deal frightened at the sudden change, but very glad to find herself still in existence; “and now for the garden!” and she ran with all speed back to the little door: but, alas!
This seemed to Alice a good opportunity for making her escape; so she set off at once, and ran till she was quite tired and out of breath, and till the puppy’s bark sounded quite faint in the distance.
She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself “It’s the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.”
Other matches
Learn escape in real texts
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