Rescuing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of saving someone or something from harm, danger, or distress
2. Performing the action of freeing a person or thing from a threatening or harmful situation
3. Intervening to protect or deliver someone or something in jeopardy to safety

Etymology: The verb "rescue" arrived in English through Old French, which took it from Latin "excutere," meaning "to shake or drive out." That Latin verb was built from "ex," "out," and "quatere," "to shake," and the Old French forms gained the prefix "re-" as they developed. The sense of forcibly shaking something loose from a hold gradually narrowed toward freeing a person from danger, which is the meaning it carries today. English had its own word for this idea before the French one arrived. The Old English "nerian," meaning to save or protect, was displaced by the Middle English borrowing, so the French-derived term took over the job entirely. The "-ing" ending simply turns the verb into a participle, so "rescuing" inherits all of this history unchanged.

Synonyms: saving, liberating, delivering, recovering, retrieving

Antonyms: abandoning, neglecting, forsaking, deserting, giving up