Meaning

• The act of leaving a dangerous or unpleasant situation.

  "The prisoners made their escape by digging a tunnel."

• Leakage or outflow, as of steam or a liquid, or an electric current through defective insulation.

• Something that has escaped; an escapee.

• A holiday, viewed as time away from the vicissitudes of life.

• Escape key

• The text character represented by 27 (decimal) or 1B (hexadecimal).

  "You forgot to insert an escape in the datastream."

• A successful shot from a snooker position.

• A defective product that is allowed to leave a manufacturing facility.

• That which escapes attention or restraint; a mistake, oversight, or transgression.

• A sally.

• An apophyge.

Meaning

• To get free; to free oneself.

  "The factory was evacuated after toxic gases escaped from a pipe."

• To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from.

  "He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail."

• To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.

  "Luckily, I escaped with only a fine."

• To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by.

  "The name of the hotel escapes me at present."

• To cause (a single character, or all such characters in a string) to be interpreted literally, instead of with any special meaning it would usually have in the same context, often by prefixing with another character.

  "Brion escaped the double quote character on Windows by adding a second double quote within the literal."

• To halt a program or command by pressing a key (such as the "Esc" key) or combination of keys.