| Display title | Metasyntactic Variable |
| Default sort key | Metasyntactic Variable |
| Page length (in bytes) | 14,869 |
| Namespace ID | 0 |
| Page ID | 468450 |
| Page content language | en - English |
| Page content model | wikitext |
| Indexing by robots | Allowed |
| Number of redirects to this page | 1 |
| Counted as a content page | Yes |
| Number of subpages of this page | 2 (0 redirects; 2 non-redirects) |
| Page image |  |
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| Page creator | Looney Toons (talk | contribs) |
| Date of page creation | 18:33, 30 November 2020 |
| Latest editor | Robkelk (talk | contribs) |
| Date of latest edit | 17:39, 21 January 2024 |
| Total number of edits | 66 |
| Recent number of edits (within past 180 days) | 3 |
| Recent number of distinct authors | 2 |
Description | Content |
Article description: (description)
This attribute controls the content of the description and og:description elements. | A Metasyntactic Variable -- also called a "Placeholder Name" -- is a word or phrase used in the place of another word or phrase in any of several contexts. By mathematical analogy, this is the linguistic equivalent of letters that are used as variables for numbers in algebra, calculus and the like. These are words that functional grammatically as nouns and that can refer to objects, places or people whose names do not exist, are temporarily forgotten, irrelevant, or unknown in the context in which they are being discussed. This can include such terms as "watchamacallit", "thingamabob", "dojiggy" and "wossname" (the latter being primarily a UK usage), or a term as simple as "thing". Most of these words and usages can be documented to at least the 19th century, but no doubt date back much further. |
