Escaping

How to spell escaping

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce escaping

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does escaping mean?

1. verbPresent participle of escape: in the act of breaking free, getting away, or avoiding something.

Escaping in a sentence

• The prisoner was caught escaping over the wall at dawn.

• Warm air kept escaping through the gap under the door.

Where does escaping come from?

Language of origin: French

This word traces back to the Old French verb eschaper, which descended from the Vulgar Latin excappare. That Latin form was built from ex, meaning 'out of', and cappa, meaning 'cloak' or 'cape', so the literal idea was 'to get out of one's cloak'. The vivid image behind it is a fleeing person slipping out of a cloak and leaving a pursuer holding nothing but the empty garment. English took the word over in the 1300s, and over time the cloak imagery faded into the plain modern sense of breaking free or getting away. The shared cappa root still links escape to the everyday words 'cape' and 'cap'. When forming this participle the silent final 'e' of escape is dropped before adding -ing, which is the small spelling point worth remembering.

How the word is built

• es- (from Latin ex-: out)
• cap (from cappa: cloak)
• -ing (present participle suffix)