Rescue

Part of speech: verb, noun

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɛs.kjuː/

Definitions

1. To save someone or something from a dangerous, harmful, or distressing situation
2. To deliver a person or thing from a risky or threatening circumstance
3. To retrieve or protect someone or something from peril or trouble

Etymology: The verb "rescue" has an unexpectedly violent ancestor. Its Latin source, "excutere," meant "to shake or drive out," built from "ex" ("out") and "quatere" ("to shake"). Add the prefix "re-" and the Latin verb "rescutere" carried the idea of forcibly shaking something loose, and in legal and military settings this came to mean taking someone back by force from captors. Old French turned it into "rescoure" or "rescorre," and Middle English borrowed it as "rescouen." English already had a word for this job. Old English "nerian," meaning to save or protect, was displaced by the French import, so "rescue" pushed out a native verb that had been doing the same work for centuries. The modern sense of pulling someone out of danger grew naturally from the older idea of wresting a person away from those holding them.

Synonyms: save, deliver, recover, release, extricate

Antonyms: abandon, desert, forsake, surrender, yield