fugitive

From Middle English fugitive, fugityve, fugityf, fugitife, fugytif, fugitif, from Latin fugitīvus.

• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuːd͡ʒɪtɪv/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: fu‧gi‧tive

fugitive (plural fugitives)

1. A person who flees or escapes and travels secretly from place to place, and sometimes using disguises and aliases to conceal their identity, as to avoid law authorities in order to avoid an arrest or prosecution, or to avoid some other unwanted situation.
   • 1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter VI, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:

     “I don't mean all of your friends—only a small proportion—which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch—the insolent chatterers at the opera, […] the speed-mad fugitives from the furies of ennui, the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard—!”

• abscotchalater (archaic)
• nomad
• wanderer
• runaway

fugitive (comparative more fugitive, superlative most fugitive)

1. Fleeing or running away; escaping.
   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     I found afterwards that he was the chauffeur, who filled the gaps left by a succession of fugitive butlers.

2. Transient, fleeting or ephemeral.
3. Elusive or difficult to retain.

fugitive (third-person singular simple present fugitives, present participle fugitiving, simple past and past participle fugitived)

1. (transitive) To render someone a fugitive; to drive into escape or exile.
   • 1864, J. B. Greenshields, Annals of the Parish of Lesmahagow, page 116:

     Her son Thomas was fugitived in the persecution.

• IPA^(key): /fy.ʒi.tiv/
• Rhymes: -iv
• Homophone: fugitives

fugitive f (plural fugitives)

1. female equivalent of fugitif: a female fugitive

• “fugitive”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

fugitīve

1. vocative masculine singular of fugitīvus