escape
/ɪˈskeɪp/
"escape" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“escape” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #2,292 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #2,292
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 2
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To get free; to free oneself.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | escape |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ɪˈskeɪp/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #2,292 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 2 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “escape” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for escape is 6 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɪˈskeɪp/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,292 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 6 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for escape, with forms such as "ecsape", "esacpe", and "escaep". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 2 confusable-pair relationships, "estate", "escaped", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English escapen, from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French 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”), fr… The correct English form is escape, spelled E-S-C-A-P-E.
Definition
- 1To get free; to free oneself.
- 2To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from.
- 3To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
- 4To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by.
- 5To cause (a single character, or all such characters in a string) to be interpreted literally, instead of with any special meaning it would usually have in the same context, often by prefixing with another character.
- 6To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.
Etymology
From Middle English escapen, from Anglo-Norman and Old Northern French 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”) + Late Latin cappa (“cape, cloak”). Cognate with escapade. Also doublet of scape.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ecsape,esacpe,escaep,escappe,esccape,escpae,esscape,secape
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of escape - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “escape”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is E-S-C-A-P-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɪˈskeɪp/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “estate” - see the side-by-side comparison. escape vs estate
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.