escape
es·cape/ɪˈskeɪp/verb, noun
escape is spelled E-S-C-A-P-E, 2 syllables: es·cape. The wrong spelling people search most is excape: about 130 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 58 of all searches for the word. Escape is a verb meaning “To get free; to free oneself”.
How many letters and syllables are in escape?
| Letters | 6: E-S-C-A-P-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2: es·cape |
| In writing | 44 times per million words; the 2,290th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, excape, about 130 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell escape?
Escape is spelled E-S-C-A-P-E. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 58 of the searches for escape in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is escape?
Escape appears 44 times per million words in written English, the 2,290th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce escape?
- UK /ɪˈskeɪp/
- UK /ɪk-/
- US /ɪˈskeɪp/
Escape has 2 syllables, split es·cape in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-escape.wav, En-us-escape.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with escape?
7 words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as escape from its last stressed vowel (/eɪp/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of escape
- escapes present, singular, he/she/it, plural
- escaping participle, present
- escaped participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does escape mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
verb
- 1
To get free; to free oneself.
The prisoners escaped by jumping over a wall.
- 2
To break out of confinement.
The prisoners escaped their cell.
- 3
To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from.
He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail.
- 4
To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.
- 5
To avoid responsibilities and stresses for a time.
Work was stressful, and I needed to escape.
- 6
To be forgotten by.
I used to know the name of the capital of France, but it escapes me now.
- 7
To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by.
The name of the hotel escapes me at present.
- 8
To 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.
When using the "bash" shell, you can escape the ampersand character with a backslash.
noun
- 1
The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation.
The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel.
- 2
Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation.
- 3
Something that has escaped; an escapee.
- 4
A holiday, viewed as time away from the vicissitudes of life.
- 5
escape key
- 6
The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal).
You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream.
- 7
A successful shot from a snooker position.
- 8
A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Escape in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | échapper, s'échapper, fuir , éviter , s'en tirer , échapper (à quelqu'un) |
| German | entgehen , ausweichen , davonkommen , Flucht |
| Portuguese | escapar, fugir , evitar , iludir, desviar , escapada |
| Spanish | escapar, liberarse, fugarse, furtarse , eludir , escapada |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does escape come from?
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).