escapistn.
/ɪˈskeɪpɪst/ 1. One who escapes, or who tries to escape, from captivity, prison, etc. Cf. escapee n.
ΘΚΠ
the world > action or operation > safety > escape > [noun] > one who escapes > from confinement or the law
fugitive1382
prison breaker1704
evader1754
refugee1754
absentee1803
escapee1875
escapado1881
escapist1934
jackrabbit1980
1934 in Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang.
1938 Punch 22 June 700/2 Escapists... The efforts of these nefarious ruffians to dodge the police.
1943 Hutchinson's Pict. Hist. War May–Aug. 43 Pantellaria was the destination of these rubber dinghy escapists, but they were rounded up by the Royal Navy.
1958 Times 22 Mar. 7/4 He rushed out of court before he could be stopped, whereupon the judge..fined the escapist £20.
2. figurative. Esp., one who seeks distraction from reality or from routine activities. Cf. escapism n.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > psychology > theory of psychoanalysis > libido > transfer of feelings > [noun] > distraction from reality
escape1853
escapist1933
escapology1939
the mind > mental capacity > psychology > theory of psychoanalysis > libido > transfer of feelings > [noun] > distraction from reality > one who seeks
escapologist1926
escapist1933
1933 C. S. Lewis Pilgrim's Regress vi. iii. 125 ‘And you have never heard Mr. Halfways either.’ ‘Never. And I never will. Do you take me for an escapist?’
1937 Ess. & Stud. 22 148 The satirist is a kind of escapist.
1942 E. Waugh Put out More Flags 252 Turning their backs on the world of effort and action. Fortunate islanders [sc. the Irish],..happy, drab escapists.
1946 J. Cary Moonlight 16 Was she, after all, an escapist? Amanda had a great contempt for escapism.
1958 Spectator 6 June 738/1 Both Hawthorne and Henry James were censured as escapists.
Derivatives
escapist adj. that provides escape from reality or routine; pertaining to escapism.
ΚΠ
1930 J. C. Ransom God without Thunder 178 It is much more likely that they betoken a defeated and escapist people.
1933 Archit. Rev. 73 206/2 Those great pioneers of the past..took up the escapist attitude of William Morris.
1940 W. Empson Gathering Storm 62 A critic like Dr. Leavis can speak with the same tone of moral outrage about an Escapist (sentimental) novel as a customs official would about Lady Chatterley's Lover, say.
1959 Manch. Guardian 15 Aug. 3/6 The escapist peace of a nudist camp.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1972; most recently modified version published online March 2019).
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n.1930