1. Run away from confinement
   "The convicted murderer escaped from a high security prison";
   - get away, break loose
    
2. Escape potentially unpleasant consequences; get away with a forbidden action
   "The teenager escaped with just a warning";
   - get off [informal], get away, get out
    
3. Fail to experience
   "Fortunately, I escaped the hurricane";
   - miss
    
4. Flee; take to one's heels; cut and run
   "The burglars escaped before the police showed up";
   - scat [informal], run, scarper [Brit, informal], turn tail [informal], lam [N. Amer, informal], run away, hightail it [N. Amer, informal], bunk [informal], head for the hills [informal], take to the woods [informal], fly the coop [informal], break away, leg it [Brit, informal]
    
5. Remove oneself from a familiar environment, usually for pleasure or diversion
   "We escaped to our summer house for a few days";
   - get away
    
6. Be incomprehensible to; escape understanding by
   "What you are seeing in him escapes me";
   - elude
    
7. Issue or leak, as from a small opening
   "Gas escaped into the bedroom"
    
8. (computing) change characters that normally have a special meaning so that they appear as literal characters rather than having their meaning applied, e.g. by prefixing the character with a special 'escape' character
   "often quotation marks are escaped by prefixing with a backslash"

1. The act of escaping physically
   "he made his escape from the mental hospital";
   - flight
    
2. An avoidance of danger or difficulty
   "that was a narrow escape"
    
3. A means or way of escaping
   "their escape route"; "hard work was his escape from worry"; "they installed a second hatch as an escape"
    
4. An inclination to retreat from unpleasant realities through diversion or fantasy
   "romantic novels were her escape from the stress of daily life";
   - escapism
    
5. Nonperformance of something distasteful (as by deceit or trickery) that you are supposed to do
   "that escape from the consequences is possible but unattractive";
   - evasion, dodging
    
6. The discharge of a fluid from some container
   "they tried to stop the escape of gas from the damaged pipe";
   - leak, leakage, outflow
    
7. A valve in a container in which pressure can build up (as a steam boiler); it opens automatically when the pressure reaches a dangerous level
   "The escape valve on the pressure cooker released excess steam";
   - safety valve, relief valve, escape valve, escape cock
    
8. A plant originally cultivated but now growing wild
   "The yellow flag iris has become an escape in many wetland areas"
    
9. (computing) a key on most modern computer keyboards (often abbreviated "Esc"); typically programmed to cancel the current operation or close the current window
   "Press the escape key to exit fullscreen mode";
   - escape key

Derived forms: escaped, escaping, escapes

Type of: agency, avoid, avoidance, baffle, beat, bedevil, befuddle, bewilder, carelessness, come forth, come out, confound, confuse, cut and run [informal], discharge, discombobulate [informal], diversion, dodging, dumbfound, egress, emerge, flee, flora, flummox, fly, fox, fuddle, get, go away, go forth, gravel, issue, leave, means, mystify, neglect, negligence, nonperformance, nonplus, off [informal], outpouring, perplex, plant, plant life, pose, puzzle, recreation, regulator, run, running away, shunning, stick, stupefy, take flight, throw, turning away, valve, vex, way

Encyclopedia: Escape