- escape
- escape vb1 Escape, flee, fly, decamp, abscond mean to run away especially from something which limits one's freedom or threatens one's well-being.Escape so stresses the idea of flight from confinement or restraint that it very often conveys no suggestion of wrongdoing or of danger{
one of the most powerful motives that attract people to science and art is the longing to escape from everyday life— Ellis
}{eager to escape from the army and go back to his hometown— Wecter
}Flee implies haste and often abruptness in departure{there was evidence that the burglars had been frightened and had fled
}It often connotes disappearance, especially when extended to things{the mists fled before the rising sun
}Fly is interchangeable with flee but its use is restricted in idiomatic English to the present tense{fly, father, fly! for all your friends are fled— Shak.
}Decamp usually suggests a sudden departure to elude discovery or arrest; it commonly carries a disparaging or belittling connotation{having imparted my situation to my companion, she found it high time for us to decamp— Smollett
}{came to town, took orders, received advances of goods or money, and then decamped— Jones
}Abscond adds to decamp the distinctive implications of clandestine withdrawal and concealment usually to avoid the consequences of fraudulent action{he had the appearance of a bankrupt tradesman absconding— Meredith
}{determined to be a poet at any price, he absconded from college with his clothes and took refuge in a lonely farmhouse— Brooks
}Contrasted words: *follow, chase, pursue, trail, tag2 Escape, avoid, evade, elude, shun, eschew are comparable when meaning to get away or to keep away from something which one does not wish to incur, endure, or encounter.Escape when referred to persons (sometimes to animals) usually implies a threat to their liberty or well-being; in this sense it may not imply running away from or even an effort to miss what threatens, but it does suggest the latter's imminence or likelihood{escape suspicion
}{escape discovery
}{escape the family tendency to tuberculosis
}{escape annoyance
}{escape a blow by dodging it
}{few fish can escape this net
}When extended to things and especially to inanimate or intangible things escape connotes something comparable to a net which holds and confines yet permits passage through it{details which escape the mind
}{nothing escaped the kind eyes— Deland
}{the exquisite beauty of this passage, even in translation, will escape no lover of poetry— Dickinson
}Avoid, in contrast with escape, suggests a keeping clear of what one does not wish to risk or knows to be a source of danger, rather than a getting away from what actually threatens; thus, one may escape suspicion by avoiding persons or places that are being watched; one may avoid all known sources of contagion yet not escape infection{he kept himself somewhat aloof, seeming to avoid notice rather than to court it— Arnold
}Avoid, however, is often used interchangeably with escape; it may be preferred when a danger is averted by forethought, prudence, or caution{mother and son avoided an open rupture by never referring to their differences— Santayana
}{by pooling our difficulties, we may at least avoid the failures which come from conceiving the problems of government to be simpler than they are— Frankfurter
}Evade implies escape or the intent to escape, but it also commonly suggests avoidance by the use of adroit, ingenious, or, sometimes, underhand means; thus, one evades suspicion who escapes it by spreading rumors that throw others off the scent; one evades a question one does not wish to answer by seeming not to hear it{the exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth, that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded— Conrad
}{wisdom consists not in premature surrender but in learning when to evade, when to stave off and when to oppose head on— Howe
}Elude comes closer to escape than to avoid but stresses a slippery or baffling quality in the thing which gets away or cannot be captured{whose secret presence, through creation's veins running quicksilverlike, eludes your pains— FitzGerald
}{for are we not all fated to pursue ideals which seem eternally to elude us— L. P. Smith
}Elude, however, is sometimes used in place of evade when there is a strong suggestion of shiftiness or unreliability or of the use of stratagems{she is adept in eluding her obligations
}{in the game of hide-and-seek the players try to elude discovery by the one seeking their hiding places
}Shun differs from avoid chiefly in its added implication of an abhorrence or aversion that is sometimes temperamental in its origin but oftentimes rational and dictated by conscience, experience, or sense of prudence{[lepers] shunned and rebuffed by the world— Heiser
}{to shun for his health the pleasures of the table— Quiller-Couch
}{thus have I shunned the fire for fear of burning— Shak.
}{I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind— Wilde
}Eschew comes very close to shun in meaning but tends to stress practical, moral, or prudential rather than temperamental reasons for the avoidance{trained to eschew private passions and pursuits— Mowrer
}{what cannot be eschewed must be embraced— Shak.
}{observers . . . thought that capitalists would eschew all connection with what must necessarily be a losing concern— Macaulay
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
