es-prefix

occurring in adoptions of Old French words beginning with es-:—Latin ex- out. A few of these words survive with the prefix unchanged, as escape, escheat; a few others have been refashioned with ex-, after Latin, as esample, now example, eschange, now exhange; but the much larger number of them are obsolete. ¶The examples of the prefix es- must be distinguished from those of the euphonic e prefixed in Old French (as in Provençal, Spanish, Portuguese) to an initial s followed by a consonant, e.g. especial, esquire.