Elope

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ɪˈləʊp/

Definitions

1. To secretly run away with a partner for marriage, frequently evading familial knowledge or societal customs
2. To leave secretly with a romantic partner in order to marry without parental approval
3. To escape privately with a lover intending to wed away from public or family notice

Etymology: "Elope" started out as a verb of motion, not of marriage. Its ancestor was the Proto-West Germanic "andihlaupan," meaning simply "to run away," built from a prefix that carried the sense of "away" or "off" and the same root that gave English "leap." That verb passed into Anglo-Norman as "aloper," where it meant "to abduct" or "to run away," and the English word was first recorded in 1593. The English "elope" therefore keeps two strands of meaning. The prefix "e-" is a reduced form of the older "a-" (from "and-"), and "lope" is the same verb that survives today in the sense of a long, bounding run. "Leap" and "lope" are doublets, two words descended from the same ancestor by different routes, so the Germanic root sits behind both. Only later did the word narrow to its modern sense of running away to get married, a specialization that the earliest uses of the English form do not yet show.

Synonyms: run away, flee, abscond, escape, get away

Antonyms: stay, remain, settle, conform, comply