Metasyntactic Variable: Difference between revisions
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Outside of computing contexts, 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 can be documented to least the 19th century.
Some fields have their own specific placeholder terminology. For example, "widget"<ref>Not to be confused with [[Widget Series|our usage of the term]]</ref> in economics, engineering and electronics, or "Blackacre" and "John Doe" or "Jane Doe" in law.
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