verb To avoid (any unpleasant person or thing); to elude, get away from.
He only got a fine and so escaped going to jail.
verb To avoid capture; to get away with something, avoid punishment.
Luckily, I escaped with only a fine.
verb To avoid responsibilities and stresses for a time.
Work was stressful, and I needed to escape.
verb To be forgotten by.
I used to know the name of the capital of France, but it escapes me now.
verb To elude the observation or notice of; to not be seen or remembered by.
The name of the hotel escapes me at present.
verb 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.
When using the "bash" shell, you can escape the ampersand character with a backslash.