egress

English

WOTD – 8 August 2006

Etymology 1

From Latin ēgressus, from ex- + gressus.

Pronunciation

• enPR: ēʹgrĕs, IPA^(key): /ˈiːɡɹɛs/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

egress (countable and uncountable, plural egresses)

1. An exit or way out.

   Antonyms: ingress, entrance, way in

   The window provides an egress in the event of an emergency.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:

     Gates of burning adamant, / Barred over us, prohibit all egress.

   • 1859, Charles Dickens, “In Secret”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, book III (The Track of a Storm), page 168:

     Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for peasants’ carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult.

   • 1910, Emerson Hough, chapter I, in The Purchase Price: Or The Cause of Compromise, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     Serene, smiling, enigmatic, she faced him with no fear whatever showing in her dark eyes. […] She put back a truant curl from her forehead where it had sought egress to the world, and looked him full in the face now, drawing a deep breath which caused the round of her bosom to lift the lace at her throat.

   • 2019, Crystal Panek, Security Fundamentals, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 11:

     Egress traffic is network traffic that begins inside a network and proceeds through its routers to its destination somewhere outside the network. […] While network ingress filtering makes Internet traffic traceable to its source, egress filtering helps ensure that unauthorized or malicious traffic never leaves the network.

   • 2021 December 29, Dominique Louis, “Causal analysis: crashworthiness at Sandilands”, in RAIL, number 947, page 33:

     We also found that the only emergency egress from the tram was by smashing the front or rear windscreens, and that emergency lighting had failed when the tram overturned.

2. The process of exiting or leaving.

   Synonym: departure

   Antonyms: entering, entrance

   • 2003, International Building Code (IBC), Chapter 10 section 1001.1:

     Buildings or portions thereof shall be provided with a means of egress system as required this chapter. The provisions of this chapter shall control the design, construction and arrangement of means egress components required to provide an approved means of egress from structures and portions thereof.

   • 2017 July 15, Chris L McGowin, Patricia A Totten, “The Unique Microbiology and Molecular Pathogenesis of Mycoplasma genitalium”, in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, volume 216, number suppl_2, →DOI, pages S382–S388:

     Although the primary rationale for selection of antigenic and phase variants is believed to be the evasion of host antibodies resulting in persistence, other possibilities exist, such as differential adherence to host cells or regulation of host cell invasion and egress.

   • 2024, Peter Grier, Key Bridge is gone. It leaves a hole in Baltimore’s blue-collar soul., in: The Christian Science Monitor, March 28 2024

     Now the crumpled structure lies across the Patapsco River outlet, blocking egress from the point like a kicked-over toy.

3. (astronomy) The end of the transit of a celestial body through the disk of an apparently larger one.

Derived terms

• ingress, egress, and regress

Translations

exit — see exit

process of exiting

• Bulgarian: излизане (bg) n (izlizane)
• Finnish: lähteminen (fi)
• French: sortie (fr) f
• German: Ausgang (de) m, Austritt (de) m
• Italian: uscita (it) f
• Latin: ēgressus m
• Romanian: ieșire (ro) f
• Russian: вы́ход (ru) m (výxod), покида́ние (ru) n (pokidánije)
• Swedish: sorti (sv)
• Turkish: çıkış (tr)
• Ukrainian: вихід (uk) m (vyxid)

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked

• Kurdish:

  Northern Kurdish: ^{(please verify)} derketin (ku) f, ^{(please verify)} dergeh (ku) f

• Spanish: ^{(please verify)} salida (es) f

Etymology 2

From Latin egressum, past participle egredi.

Pronunciation

• enPR: ĭ-grĕsʹ, IPA^(key): /ɪˈɡɹɛs/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

Verb

egress (third-person singular simple present egresses, present participle egressing, simple past and past participle egressed)

1. (intransitive) To exit or leave; to go or come out.

Synonyms

• (exit): come out, depart, exit, go out, leave

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “exit”): come in, enter, go in

Anagrams

• Segers, serges