\Es*cape"ment\, n. [Cf. F. ['e]chappement. See
{Escape}.]
1. The act of escaping; escape. [R.]
2. Way of escape; vent. [R.]
         An escapement for youthful high spirits. --G. Eliot.
3. The contrivance in a timepiece which connects the train of
   wheel work with the pendulum or balance, giving to the
   latter the impulse by which it is kept in vibration; -- so
   called because it allows a tooth to escape from a pallet
   at each vibration.
Note: Escapements are of several kinds, as the vertical, or
      verge, or crown, escapement, formerly used in watches,
      in which two pallets on the balance arbor engage with a
      crown wheel; the anchor escapement, in which an
      anchor-shaped piece carries the pallets; -- used in
      common clocks (both are called recoil escapements, from
      the recoil of the escape wheel at each vibration); the
      cylinder escapement, having an open-sided hollow
      cylinder on the balance arbor to control the escape
      wheel; the duplex escapement, having two sets of teeth
      on the wheel; the lever escapement, which is a kind of
      detached escapement, because the pallets are on a lever
      so arranged that the balance which vibrates it is
      detached during the greater part of its vibration and
      thus swings more freely; the detent escapement, used in
      chronometers; the remontoir escapement, in which the
      escape wheel is driven by an independent spring or
      weight wound up at intervals by the clock train, --
      sometimes used in astronomical clocks. When the shape
      of an escape-wheel tooth is such that it falls dead on
      the pallet without recoil, it forms a deadbeat
      escapement.