scarper
Plural: scarpers
Verb
Verb Forms: scarpered, scarpering, scarpers
- To run away; to flee hastily.
- flee; take to one's heels; cut and run
- Chiefly in scarper the letty: to depart quickly or run away from (a place); to flee.
- To depart quickly; to escape, to flee, to run away.
Noun
- Chiefly in do a scarper: an act of departing quickly or running away; an escape, a flight.
Examples
- Seeing the opponent’s formidable rack, he felt like he should SCARPER from the game.
Origin / Etymology
The verb is probably borrowed from Italian scappare (“to run away, escape, flee”), from Vulgar Latin *excappāre (“to escape”), from Latin ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’) + cappa (“(Late Latin) cape, cloak (usually with a hood); (Medieval Latin) cap; headwear”) (further etymology uncertain, probably ultimately from caput (“head”), from dialectal Proto-Indo-European *káput (“head”)) + -āre (the present active infinitive of -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)). Around World War I (1914–1918), the English word was influenced by the Cockney rhyming slang term Scapa Flow (“to go”). Doublet of escape and scape.
The noun is derived from the verb.
Synonyms
break away, bunk, escape, fly the coop, head for the hills, hightail it, lam, run, run away, scat, take to the woods, turn tail
Scrabble Score: 11
scarper: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordscarper: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
scarper: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary