ESC

1. Short for escape, esc is a key located on a computer keyboard that allows a user to cancel or abort operations.
2. Short for escalation, esc is used to describe or refer to an escalation number dealing with an important customer related issue.
3. Escape also shorthand for an escape character, an escape is often a single backward slash ( \ ) in programming (and some portions of Linux) or a period forward slash (./) in Linux and Unix operating systems. An escape enables a user to perform a special function or to have a character treated as plain text and not a function. Below are some examples of how an escape could be used.
   
   \*
   The above example would treat the asterisk as a plain text asterisk and not as a wild card.
   
   \"
   The above example would treat the quote character as a quote character and not a beginning or end container. For example, in programming languages such as perl this is required if you're printing text to a file or the screen that contains a quote characters using the print command with quotes, e.g., print "This is a \" quote.";
   
   \n
   Print a newline character to a file or the screen.

Also see: Escape sequence, Keyboard definitions, Meta-character, Programming definitions