Dictionaries › English

rescue

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɛs.kjuː/

The English word “rescue” has 15 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To save from any violence, danger or evil.
  2. To free or liberate from confinement or other physical restraint.
  3. To recover forcibly, especially from a siege.
  4. To remove or withdraw from a state of exposure to evil and sin.
  5. To achieve something positive under difficult conditions.
  6. To restore a particular trait in an organism that was lost or altered, especially where this loss was as the consequence of some experimental manipulation.
  7. To salvage and restore something that has been discarded.
  8. To fix a mistake made while preparing something, especially in cooking.
  9. To adopt (an animal).

noun

  1. An act or episode of rescuing, saving.
  2. A liberation, freeing.
  3. The act of unlawfully freeing a person, or confiscated goods, from custody.
  4. The forcible ending of a siege; liberation from similar military peril.
  5. A special airliner flight to bring home passengers who are stranded.
  6. A rescuee.

Etymology

From Middle English rescouen, from Old French rescoure, rescurre, rescorre; from Latin prefix re- (“re-”) + excutere (“to shake or drive out”), from ex (“out”) + quatiō (“to shake”). Displaced native Old English nerian.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “rescue” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.