diff --git a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/output_safety.rb b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/output_safety.rb
index f0f819cc459..c761325108d 100644
--- a/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/output_safety.rb
+++ b/activesupport/lib/active_support/core_ext/string/output_safety.rb
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ class ERB
     HTML_ESCAPE = { '&' => '&amp;',  '>' => '&gt;',   '<' => '&lt;', '"' => '&quot;', "'" => '&#39;' }
     JSON_ESCAPE = { '&' => '\u0026', '>' => '\u003e', '<' => '\u003c', "\u2028" => '\u2028', "\u2029" => '\u2029' }
     HTML_ESCAPE_REGEXP = /[&"'><]/
-    HTML_ESCAPE_ONCE_REGEXP = /["><']|&(?!([a-zA-Z]+|(#\d+)|(#[xX][\dA-Fa-f]{1,4}));)/
+    HTML_ESCAPE_ONCE_REGEXP = /["><']|&(?!([a-zA-Z]+|(#\d+)|(#[xX][\dA-Fa-f]+));)/
     JSON_ESCAPE_REGEXP = /[\u2028\u2029&><]/u
 
     # A utility method for escaping HTML tag characters.