escape

verb escapes · escaping · escaped

1. intransitive To get free; to free oneself. The prisoners escaped by jumping over a wall.
2. transitive To break out of confinement. The prisoners escaped their cell.
3. transitive To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from. He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail.
4. intransitive To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment. Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.
5. intransitive To avoid responsibilities and stresses for a time. Work was stressful, and I needed to escape.
6. transitive To be forgotten by. I used to know the name of the capital of France, but it escapes me now.
7. transitive To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by. The name of the hotel escapes me at present.
8. transitive 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.
9. To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.
10. intransitive, of a plant 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.
11. transitive To express, especially involuntarily. I tried to look disappointed, but a smile escaped me.

Similar: break loose, take it on the lam

noun escapes

1. countable, uncountable The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation. The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel.
2. countable, uncountable Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation.
3. countable, uncountable Something that has escaped; an escapee. But what about the flocks of Waxbills? Are they escapes gone feral, or are they spreading from Africa?
4. countable, uncountable A holiday, viewed as time away from the vicissitudes of life.
5. countable, uncountable escape key
6. countable, uncountable The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal). You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream.
7. countable, uncountable A successful shot from a snooker position.
8. countable, uncountable A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.
9. countable, obsolete, uncountable That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression. I should have been more accurate, corrected all those former escapes.
10. countable, obsolete, uncountable A sally. thousand escapes of wit
11. countable, uncountable An apophyge.
12. countable, uncountable A cultivated plant found growing as though wild, dispersed by some agency.