evade

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French évader,^[2][3][4][5] from Latin ēvādō (“to go out, escape, get away”),^[2][5][6] from ē- (“out, away”), a form of ex-, and vādō (“to go, walk”).^[2][5][7][8] Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com also allow a direct borrowing from Latin.^[3][9] The OED notes that the transitive use is found neither in Latin nor in modern French, but occurs in 15th-century French, and compares evadir and evadere.^[4] Klein relates the Latin verb to vadum (“a shallow, ford”) and makes it cognate with Old English wadan (“to wade”), the source of wade.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To escape, get away: Barnhart and Merriam-Webster date it to 1513,^[2][3] and the OED's first quotation, of the intransitive sense, is from Gavin Douglas's translation of the Aeneid, before 1522.^[4] Weekley notes that both evade and evasion first had the original sense of escaping.^[10]

Semantic evolution

The sense of escaping by trickery or contrivance is recorded from 1535,^[2][5][4] and it then turned to avoiding things that were not pursuers: a question or charge in Shakespeare's Othello (before 1616), an argument by sophistry (1630), a duty or payment (1722, in Defoe's Moll Flanders) and the intention of a law, especially by keeping to its letter (1762).^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it as "to elude; to escape by artifice or stratagem".^[11] The plain sense "get away, escape" is now rare.^[4][12]

Timeline

• 1513 – to escape.^[2][3]
• 1535 – to escape by trickery or contrivance.^[2][5]
• before 1616 – to avoid answering a question, in Shakespeare.^[4]
• 1660 – intransitive, to practise evasion.^[4]
• 1722 – to contrive to avoid a duty or payment.^[4]
• 1762 – to get round a law.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To escape or keep away from someone or something by cleverness or trickery: The suspect evaded the police for a month.^[13][3][4]
2. To avoid doing or fulfilling something one ought to, such as a duty or the payment of taxes: to evade military service.^[13][3][4]
3. To avoid giving a direct answer to a question; to dodge: The minister evaded every question about the budget.^[13][4]
4. (intransitive) To use evasion; to slip away.^[3][4]
5. Of things, to elude or baffle efforts to grasp them: The answer evaded her.^[3][4]

Word family

• evadable
• evader
• evadingly
• unevaded
• evasion
• evasive

Related words

• invade
• pervade
• wade
• vamoose

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins