Q A word that’s always interested me is “elope.” I always think of it as describing people running off to get married, but my dictionary tells me it has other meanings too. Can you explain its history and its uses? – E.L., Austin, Nev.

A: “Elope” is a fairly old word, with its first recorded use in English dating back to 1628. It is derived from the Anglo-French verb “aloper,” with which it is synonymous. The origin of “aloper” itself is uncertain, although it may be related to the Middle Dutch “ontlopen” and the German “entlaufen,” both of which mean “to run away.”

In any case, the original use of “elope” was in describing a wife leaving her husband for another man. This is a legal sense that has had little use in general contexts, and in fact now seems to be rare in legal contexts as well. One of our most recent clear-cut examples of it is from a magazine in 1952, in which a married woman in the 19th century is “said to have eloped with another man but there is no trace of a divorce.”

The more familiar sense of “elope,” “to run away secretly for the purpose of getting married,” seems to have originated sometime in the early 1800s. It represents a natural development of the older sense, especially when you consider that having a daughter run off to marry without her parents’ say-so was probably then almost as scandalous as having a wife skip town with her lover. Nowadays, of course, images of two young people stealing away in the night to tie the marital knot have acquired an appealingly romantic hue.

“Elope” has had many other uses in its history, although pretty much all of them have shared the underlying sense of running off secretly or illicitly. Our files contain, for example, references to patients eloping from psychiatric hospitals and to students eloping from school for a day at the racetrack. Such uses of “elope” are rare, but they are well-established nonetheless.

Q I often hear or read about people who are found to be “legally drunk,” and the expression always strikes me as a strange one. If you’re legally drunk, doesn’t that mean that it’s legal for you to be drunk? Shouldn’t the phrase be “illegally drunk”? – D.M., Los Angeles

A: The “legally” of “legally drunk” means “according to the law.” A person who is legally drunk is drunk according to the definition of drunkenness contained in the law, which typically specifies a certain minimum percentage of alcohol in the blood as an indicator of drunkenness. Strange as it may seem, it’s perfectly possible to be both “legally drunk” and “illegally drunk” at the same time.

A similar use of “legally” occurs in “legally blind,” a term describing a person who is not necessarily totally blind but whose vision is bad enough to meet the legal definition of blindness.

This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

Readers may send questions to Merriam-Webster’s Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, Mass. 01102.

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