fugitive

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

• IPA^(key): /ˈfjuːd͡ʒɪtɪv/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• 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 his/her 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.

• 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