“M-” bindings in vim on iTerm2/Terminal don't work

Question

I noticed that iTerm2 offers the very convenient feature of using \"Option key as +ESC\" (or as meta, but apparently that\'s obsolete).

I tried them both and the op

Answer 1

I left my option key to act as Normal and discovered that Vim saw them as bindings. So, for example, I have this mapping setup in my .vimrc to move to the end of a word when in Insert mode:

noremap!  ;