make away

make away

1. (obsolete, intransitive) To depart, leave; to make off.
2. (obsolete, transitive) To destroy.
3. (obsolete, transitive) To kill.
   • Burton

     If a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away.

4. (obsolete, transitive) To get rid of, dispose of.
   • 1740, Samuel Richardson, Pamela, vol.II:

     ‘Will you,’ said he, ‘on your honour, let me see them uncurtailed, and not offer to make them away; no, not a single paper?’

5. (obsolete, reflexive) To kill oneself, commit suicide.
   • 1603, John Florio, transl.; Michel de Montaigne, chapter 40, in The Essayes, […], book I, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     the people impatient of so many changes of fortune, tooke such a resolution unto death, that I have heard my father say, he kept accompt of five and twentie chiefe housholders, that in one weeke made them-selves away […].

   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):

     , New York Review of Books, 2001, p.263:

     Hostratus the friar took that book which Reuchlin had written against him, under the name of Epist. obscurorum vivorum, so to heart, that for shame and grief he made away himself.

• make away with