On iTerm2 by default the Option key is mapped to, well, Option itself, as to type special symbols. That doesn't make much sense as in a terminal emulator you probably want to send keyboard shortcut signals rather than fancy signs.
Hence the remapping option of Left/Right Option keys to Meta or Esc+. But why not just Meta alone? Why does Esc have to do with anything?
It turns out that Meta and Esc are equivalent. But why the redundancy? I Googled quite a bit but findings are limited.
https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/User-Input.html states that "this feature is useful on certain text terminals where the <Meta> key does not function reliably".
https://books.google.com/books?id=P_jCDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA73 states that "this alternative way of using <Meta> was created because, at one time, there were keyboards that didn't have a Meta key or an Alt key".
http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/modernization_meta_key.html is also a good reference for you to understand that keyboards don't always look the way they do today.
At least one can finally make sense out of the redundancy. Relieved, right?
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