Meaning

2 senses
  1. (UK, dated, slang, transitive)Chiefly in scarper the letty: to depart quickly or run away from (a place); to flee.

    flee; take to one's heels; cut and run

  2. (UK, intransitive, slang)To depart quickly; to escape, to flee, to run away.

Examples

3 sentences
  1. He scarpered as soon as he saw me.

    Він утік, щойно побачивши мене.

    ruОн смылся, как только меня увидел.

    deSobald er mich sah, nahm er Reißaus.

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  2. Well now… Shall we scarper before we're found?

    deNa, wollen wir uns dann aus dem Staub machen, bevor man uns findet?

    CC BY · Tatoeba · sundown · C2Open on TatoebaReport a problem
  3. The other kids managed to scarper, but Michael was caught.

    deDie anderen Kinder schafften es, abzuhauen, aber Michel wurde erwischt.

    CC BY · Tatoeba · sundown · C2Open on TatoebaReport a problem

Origin

The verb is probably borrowed from Italian scappare (“to run away, escape, flee”), from Vu

The verb is probably borrowed from Italian scappare (“to run away, escape, flee”), from Vulgar Latin *excappāre (“to escape”), from Latin ex- (prefix meaning ‘away; out’) + cappa (“(Late Latin) cape, cloak (usually with a hood); (Medieval Latin) cap; headwear”) (further etymology uncertain, probably ultimately from caput (“head”), from dialectal Proto-Indo-European *káput (“head”)) + -āre (the present active infinitive of -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)). Around World War I (1914–1918), the English word was influenced by the Cockney rhyming slang term Scapa Flow (“to go”). Doublet of escape and scape.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

scarpers, scarpering, scarpered, scarpered
Base formscarper · to scarper
3rd person singularscarpers
Present participlescarpering
Past simplescarpered
Past participlescarpered

regular · Lesson

Present simpleLesson

I, you, we, theyscarper
he, she, itscarpers

Past simpleLesson

all personsscarpered

Present perfectLesson

I, you, we, theyhave scarpered
he, she, ithas scarpered

Future simple (will)Lesson

all personswill scarper

Synonyms

12 synonyms
Close in meaning

Word family

1 related words
Relatedscamper

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
scarper — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto