Other forms: escaped, escapes, escaping
To escape is to get free and away from something holding you — a prison, a fire, a difficult situation. He escaped through a window. Two prisoners escaped overnight.
It works with and without an object: escape from prison, escape the fire. Escape from is the usual pattern for places; escape with no preposition works for a fate — escape injury, escape punishment. A third sense is common and quiet: something escapes you when you cannot remember it — her name escapes me. And in computing, Escape is the key at the top left, and escaping a character means marking it so it is read literally.
1verbescapeTo get free from a place or a situation.
“The dog escaped through a gap in the fence.”
synonyms: get away, flee, break out
2verbavoidTo avoid something bad.
“They escaped serious injury by inches.”
3nounactAn act of getting away.
“The escape was planned for months.”
4verbfailTo fail to be noticed or remembered.
“The name escapes me at the moment.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
escape is a way of getting free.
Vulgar Latin excappare meant to get out of your cape — ex-, out, plus cappa, a cloak. The picture is somebody slipping out of a garment their pursuer has hold of, which is one of the most vivid etymologies in English and exactly what escape still means.
Latin
ex- — out
Vulgar Latin
*excappāre — to escape a garment, get out of one's clothing
fro-nor
escaper
Middle English
escapen
English, today
escape
From Middle English escapen, from Anglo-Norman - and fro-nor escaper (= Old French eschaper, modern French échapper), from Vulgar Latin excappāre (“to escape a garment, get out of one's clothing”) literally “to free oneself from one's cape”, from Latin ex- (“out”) + Latin cappa (“cape, cloak”). Cognate with escapade. Also a doublet of scape.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA