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I was looking for the meaning of informer in Oxford Learnear's Dictionary. I got the meaning but the first example sentenses is not understandable to me.

Here is the complete definition and example sentences as in the dictionary (my question is related to the highlighted sentence):

informer

a person who gives information to the police or other authority.

  • The bomber turned (= became) police informer to escape prison.

  • One of the gang members had turned informer.

The meaning of the verb turn is my problem. If "turn" means "become" as the dictionary has written in paranthesis, what is the role of escape? Who has escaped from the prison? The bomber or the informer?

Please explain a little about the structure of the sentence. For example, what is the role of "to" in "to escape prison"?

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    Omid, you seem to understand the meaning of "turn" correctly. Your confusion is about the meaning of "to". I encourage you to edit the title and body to reflect this because I'm concerned it's going to be voted closed, as it appears to be asking both about "turn" and about "to"
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Jun 6, 2022 at 17:46
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    "Who has escaped from the prison? The bomber or the informer?" - the bomber is the informer, and they did not escape from prison, they avoided going there at all.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Jun 6, 2022 at 17:53
  • @gotube No, I was not at all sure about the meaning of "turn". Actually I was thinking maybe Oxford has mistakenly written "(=became)" in parenthesis. Also I missed the correct meaning of "to" and the whoel sentence did not make any sense to me when I asked the question.
    – Omid Sadeghi
    Commented Jun 9, 2022 at 18:06

1 Answer 1

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The bomber became a police informer in order to escape prison.

  1. To turn, in a legal or police context, can mean to change from being an accused person to become a helper of the police or witness for the prosecution.

  2. To escape something can mean to avoid it - you could escape death by jumping early enough from a sinking ship.

  3. 'To' here is a preposition of purpose - example: I hit the dog with a stick to stop it biting my mother. The bomber helped the police for the purpose of avoiding prison.

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    +1 and for added clarity, "to escape prison" means "in order to escape prison".
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Jun 6, 2022 at 17:43
  • I think the main point of confusion for me was the word "scape". I thought it means to run away. I thought the bomber was in prison and then he ran away from the prison maybe by exploding a bomb in the prison. I couldn't see that "scape" means "avoid". I was sure that scape means run away and because of that the sentense became meaningless. Then I hypothesized maybe I don't understand the meaning of turn. Also meaning of "to" was clear to me.
    – Omid Sadeghi
    Commented Jun 9, 2022 at 18:13

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