Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To run away, as from trouble or danger: fled from the house into the night.
- v. To pass swiftly away; vanish: "of time fleeing beneath him” ( William Faulkner).
- v. To run away from: flee the scene of an accident.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To run away; take flight; seek escape or safety by flight.
- To disappear; disperse: as, all our pleasures have fled; the color fled from her cheeks; the clouds flee before the rising sun.
- To move swiftly; fly; speed, as a missile.
- To avoid by flight; fly from; shun.
- n. An obsolete or dialectal form of fly.
- An obsolete form of fly.
Wiktionary
- v. intransitive To run away; to escape.
- v. transitive To escape from.
- v. intransitive To disappear quickly; to vanish.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To run away, as from danger or evil; to avoid in an alarmed or cowardly manner; to hasten off; -- usually with
from . This is sometimes omitted, making the verb transitive.
WordNet 3.0
- v. run away quickly
Etymologies
- From Old English flēon, from Proto-Germanic *fleuhanan. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English flen, from Old English flēon; see pleu- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Mara and Dann in the eco-fable of the same name flee from a new Ice Age to an uncertain foothold in what used to be Africa.”
“Reuters reports that “Taliban fighters are shaving off their beards and trying to flee from a Pakistani army offensive in their Swat bastion, the military said on Friday, as it relaxed a curfew to allow civilians to get out.””
“BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A man who repossesses artificial organs must flee from the organization that employs him when he cannot pay for his own artificial heart.”
“He wanted to flee from the artifice of his fathers creation: he longed to become an autonomous adult, to be a man, not the object of nostalgic pilgrimages to a living shrine not of his making.”
“That weak souls, and sensitive souls, and high-pitched souls flee from the crassness and the rawness of the world to the drug-dreams of the over-world of rhythm and vibration — ”
“Taliban captors held him hostage for seven months, until June of last year, when he and his Afghan colleague managed to flee from a compound in Pakistan's North Waziristan region.”
Voice of America: Former Hostage: Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban Work 'Seamlessly Together'
“They pick up a sixteen year old signal in French from previous castaways, they encounter and kill a polar bear, and they flee from a monster which has thus far remained out of sight (and which also devoured the pilot who was the sole survivor from the front section of the aircraft).”
“The rush to flee from the men in black had overridden concerns about direction, and his GPS had been corrupted in the midst of his attack on the drones.”
“Meanwhile Aaron must flee from the cops and other Berserkers.”
Top Cow Sneak Peek: Berserker #3 | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News
“Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Indonesian residents flee from a risky area on Monday, as the Mount Merapi volcano releases ash clouds in the village of Balerante.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘flee’.
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Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
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henryar's list
marmoleum, menagerie, cyan, ochre, pilfer, discombobulate, loquacious, iridescent, amethyst, derelict, botulism, equilibrium and 240 more...
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RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
wrath, leaf, belly, prey, death, break, six, nod, dim, end, inn, judge and 1286 more...
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Shakespeare.04
indissoluble, epicure, farrow, trammel, assay, exasperate, flourish, hoodwink, abjure, braggart, pernicious, sleight and 3 more...
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ptssssssss
uemph
sandcastle, for all to see, but, mostly, them, if they wish, sorta hope, maybe, pop-up, snap, gotcha, cause then i have... and 20 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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savage215's Words
pipe, yankee, knickerbocker, tennis, plasma, magma, volcano, car, truck, television, tv, word and 445 more...
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Sat Vocabulary List
abandon, abash, abate, abjure, ablution, abnegate, abominable, aboriginal, abortive, abrade, abridge, abrogate and 2155 more...
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lotic words of flow
fast flowing, rapid, confluent words
boustrophedon, boustrophedric, thixotrophic, ludic, hesychastic, blend, quaquaversal, phacoemulsification, mordant, glissando, vatic, tournure and 233 more...
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i like the sounds of these words
thistle, mellifluous, cicadian, calligraphy, facile, flamenco, germane, flee, glisten, chilean, fillet, flint
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action
cut, slice, move, slide, jump, cycle, dodge, appear, disappear, fly, flee, grate and 2 more...
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Scavenger Hunt #2: Flair
Words that begin with "fl" and have to do with movement.
flit, flutter, float, fly, flee, flap, flail, flex, fleet, flick, flinch, fling and 11 more...
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f by four
four, five, free, fair, fund, flee, flea, flue, felt, farm, fuzz, flex and 52 more...
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SAT PSAT ALPHABETICAL F
fabricate, fabulist, facade, facet, facetious, facilitate, facsimile, factious, fain, fallacy, fallow, fanatical and 69 more...
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F
felicity, forget-me-not, frost, faerie, fate, fragile, freckles, fickle, flit, feather, firefly, flibbertigibbet and 41 more...
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Words to describe motion
locomotion, gait, lope, bolt, race, dart, dash, scamper, sprint, jog, scurry, flit and 10 more...
Tweets
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