Escaped

How to spell escaped

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce escaped

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does escaped mean?

1. verbBroke free from confinement, danger, or control; got away.
2. adjectiveHaving got free from confinement or control, used before a noun.

Escaped in a sentence

• verb

  Two inmates escaped from the prison overnight.

• adjective

  Police searched the woods for the escaped convict.

• verb

  The cat escaped through the open kitchen window.

• adjective

  The zoo issued a warning about an escaped snake.

Where does escaped come from?

Language of origin: French

This word goes back to the Old French escaper, which English borrowed in the 1300s, and behind that lies a vivid Vulgar Latin coinage, excappare. That verb was built from ex, meaning 'out of', and cappa, meaning 'cloak' or 'cape', so it literally meant 'to get out of one's cape'. The picture is a fugitive wriggling free of a pursuer who has grabbed only the cloak, leaving it behind to slip away. From that concrete image the sense broadened to mean breaking free from any confinement or danger. The same cappa root survives in the everyday words 'cape' and 'cap', which is a handy reminder that the spelling hides a 'cape' in the middle, with no x and a single c.

How the word is built

• es- (out, from Latin ex-)
• cap (cloak, from Latin cappa)
• -ed (past tense/participle suffix)