| Definition: One of the many names for the \ symbol. |
| Etymology: The term escape character arose from the computing field in the latter half of the 20th century. In that field, it denotes a code used to indicate that subsequence characters should be interpreted differently — i.e., that control should be passed to another part of the computer program.
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Oxford English Dictionary: The first OED citation for the phrase is from 1962: "*Escape character, a character used to indicate that the digit which follows is to be interpreted as belonging to a different alphabet."
(Gloss. Terms Automatic Data Processing (B.S.I.) 15) |