"Elope" from a nursing home?

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:33 PM -0500 11/16/07, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>At 11/15/2007 11:25 PM, Charlie Cunningham wrote:
>>Try Googleing "elope juvenile placement" and you will find a common,
>>specialized usage similar to your nursing home application.  I'm a judge who
>>hears dependency cases and it took me a while to get accustomed to this
>>usage.
>
>And James Harbeck wrote:
>>New to me. They probably decided on that word because they didn't
>>like the tone of "escape."
>
>And John McChesney-Young similarly.
>
>This occurred to me later also -- "escape" too vividly conveys the
>notion that the "inmate" is "confined" (which of course is true of
>these "residents"), and the company of administrators of nursing
>homes (and of juvenile "placement" facilities) decided to replace it
>with the less negatively-connotative "elope".
>
>Joel

I keep picturing the classic elopement scene, complete with moonlight
and ladder (propped against the nursing home wall).  Makes for a
somewhat incongruous picture.

LH

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