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Comment by lkuty | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of Henri Laborit's book entitled "Eloge de la fuite" (in praise of flight) which states that when faced with stress, we can respond with action, flight, or inaction. Unlike the other two responses, inaction is toxic to the body. Maybe giving up corresponds to flight. I didn't read the article.

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There is a fourth - fawn.

Aka capitulate to, or attempt to befriend/suck up to the threat.

It’s a pretty common, but particularly reviled response, actually. very apparent in some sectors of politics right now though.

"fuite" is french which means to escape, to flee. Flight is only in context of planes or flying transportation. As for the sense of it, you're right, it's either do something, go away, or do nothing.

The usage is a bit archaic, but that's another meaning of flight.

flight [flahyt]

noun an act or instance of fleeing or running away; hasty departure.

I honestly don't know how you define archaic here because it's very much a current usage of the word.

(of a linguistic form) commonly used in an earlier time but rare in present-day usage except to suggest the older time, as in religious rituals or historical novels. Examples. thou; wast; methinks; forsooth.

Its usage isn’t extinct, but it is far less common than it used to be and IS largely extinct in casual day to day speech. We would say flee, run away, escape, or any of a dozen other things more often than “flight”

What distinction do you draw between “flight” and “fleeing”? To me they are synonyms.

From Cambridge.org:

> (an act or example of) escape, running away, or avoiding something: > They lost all their possessions during their flight from the invading army.

I was merely making the distinction for those non-english natives people like me who tilted their head not getting it at first :D

I think idioms that are synonyms of close concepts must be the hardest to learn in a second language. Can you trade any French examples?

Since my mother tongue is french, I guess I didn't choose the proper english word. In the context of an attack we sometimes see the "fight or flight" response. But I don't know what is the best term to translate "fuite" in this context.

"Flight" is used in English to mean "an act of fleeing". It's perhaps less common outside of specific idioms ("fight or flight" being one of them, yes), but people will generally understand you correctly in context. It seems from the rest of the comments that GP is also not a native English speaker.

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