the.com/emergency exit
The door everyone ignores until the one moment it owns your life.
means A designated door or route built for escaping a building quickly when something has gone badly wrong.
from Not an ancient word but a plain compound: 'emergency' comes from Latin 'emergere' — to rise up or come forth out of (as a submerged thing breaks the surface) — which by the 1600s had extended to mean a sudden, pressing event rising unexpectedly out of normal affairs. 'Exit' is simply Latin for 'he/she/it goes out,' borrowed directly into English as a stage direction and then a noun for the way out. Pair them and you get a 19th/20th-century safety-and-architecture term: the way out built specifically for when something 'rises up' and demands it.
- legal minimum
- planes need one reachable within 60 seconds
- glow sign
- green became international standard, red confused people in smoke
- psychology
- most people flee the way they entered, not nearest exit