ELOPEMENT

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does elopement mean? 

• ELOPEMENT (noun)
  The noun ELOPEMENT has 1 sense:

1. the act of running away with a lover (usually to get married)

  Familiarity information: ELOPEMENT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ELOPEMENT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of running away with a lover (usually to get married)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("elopement" is a kind of...):

running away (the act of leaving (without permission) the place you are expected to be)

Derivation:

elope (run away secretly with one's beloved)

 Context examples 

She had never been able to attach even those she loved best; and since Mrs. Rushworth's elopement, her temper had been in a state of such irritation as to make her everywhere tormenting.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I am no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous elopement.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her name's Emily, and she lives in the east?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

By the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded on paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

You may not have heard of the last blow—Julia's elopement; she is gone to Scotland with Yates.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Had they no apprehension of anything before the elopement took place?

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Julia's elopement could affect her comparatively but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not occupy her, could not dwell on her mind.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy's meditated elopement.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Tom's complaints had been greatly heightened by the shock of his sister's conduct, and his recovery so much thrown back by it, that even Lady Bertram had been struck by the difference, and all her alarms were regularly sent off to her husband; and Julia's elopement, the additional blow which had met him on his arrival in London, though its force had been deadened at the moment, must, she knew, be sorely felt.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)