Metasyntactic Variable: Difference between revisions

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 * The Russian FIDO community Kaschenko came up with "Shooshpanchik", which was a meme spontaneously evolved from a taunt to one user (who in the end apparently was proud of it). Shooshpanchik is a subset of living creatures, but does not have a more specific meaning. Typically it was used to mutate jokes (e.g. "Hedgehog is an ancient and chthonic animal" could be transformed into "Shooshpanchik is an ancient and metasyntactic animal") or as a substitute "classification" for something made up (one short scene from ''[[Star Wars]]'' prequels was summarized as "Two shooshpanchiks graze near the spaceship. Male one and female one. [[What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?|They symbolize.]]").
 ** This spawned derivatives, such as "shushpanzer" (шушпанцер), which means more or less "[https://shushpanzer-ru.livejournal.com/ armored vehicle that looks weird or improvised and obviously doesn't fit well into classifications]", "shushpancycle" ("[https://shushpanzer-ru.livejournal.com/tag/%D1%88%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BB шушпанцикл]", the same for motorcycles and other small wheeled vehicles) and "shushpangewehr" ("[https://mpopenker.livejournal.com/tag/%D1%88%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%8F шушпангевер]", the same for firearms, especially long arms).
-* All The Tropes (and [[TV Tropes]] before us) has a history of using the word "trope" as a Metasyntactic Variable in trope names, such as [[The Trope Kid]], [[Disney Owns This Trope]] and [[The Von Trope Family]].  TVT began discouraging this practice long before the fork leading to ATT took place, and many such names were later replaced, but we still have a dozen or so lurking about, and have even added a couple of our own, such as [[Tropacabana]].
+* All The Tropes (and [[TV Tropes]] before us) has a history of using the word "trope" as a Metasyntactic Variable in trope names, such as [[The Trope Kid]], [[Disney Owns This Trope]] and [[The Von Trope Family]]. TVT began discouraging this practice long before the fork leading to ATT took place, and many such names were later replaced, but we still have a dozen or so lurking about, and have even added a couple of our own, such as [[Tropacabana]].
 == [[Western Animation]] ==
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 == Other Media ==
-== [[Real Life]] ==
+==[[Real Life]]==
-* Metasyntactic variables used commonly across all programming languages include ''foobar, foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, quuz, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, [[Colossal Cave Adventure|plugh, xyzzy]]'', and ''thud''; several of these words are references to the game ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]''.
+* Metasyntactic variables used commonly across all programming languages include ''foobar, foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, quuz, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, [[Colossal Cave Adventure|plugh, xyzzy]]'', and ''thud''.
 ** ''Wibble, wobble, wubble'', and ''flob'' are also used in the UK.
 * Japanese programmers commonly use ''hoge'' (ほげ) and ''piyo'' (ぴよ), with other common words and variants being ''fuga'' (ふが), ''hogera'' (ほげら), and ''hogehoge'' (ほげほげ).
 * In France, the word ''toto'' is widely used by programmers, with variants ''tata, titi'', and ''tutu'' as related placeholders.
 * The [[w:Whatchamacallit (candy)|''Whatchamacallit'' bar]], a chocolate/peanut butter/caramel candy bar introduced by Hershey in 1978, uses a Metasyntactic Variable as its name to emphasize what at the time of its release was a candy bar allegedly radically different from any produced before.
-** Hershey also briefly (2009-2012) produced a chocolate-peanut butter bar called the ''Thingamajig''.
+** Hershey also briefly produced a chocolate-peanut butter bar called the ''Thingamajig'', which was available from 2009 to 2012.
 * "X-ray" was originally a placeholder name for an [[Unknown Phenomenon|unexplained phenomenon]], with "X" representing, as in algebra, the unknown.
-* It is common to use the name ACME in example SQL Databases and as placeholder company-name for the purpose of teaching. The term 'ACME Database' is commonly used to mean a training or example-only set of database data used solely for training or testing. ACME is also commonly used in documentation which shows SQL usage examples, a common practice with in many educational texts as well as technical documentation from companies such as Microsoft and Oracle.
+* It is common to use the name "ACME" in example SQL Databases and as placeholder company-name for the purpose of teaching. The term 'ACME Database' is commonly used to mean a training or example-only set of database data used solely for training or testing. ACME is also commonly used in documentation which shows SQL usage examples, a common practice with in many educational texts as well as technical documentation from companies such as Microsoft and Oracle.
 * "Advent corporation" is a term used by lawyers to describe an as yet unnamed corporation, while legal incorporation documents are being prepared.
 ** The very real [[w:Advent Corporation|Advent Corporation]] (active 1967-1981) got its name when its founder liked the sound of the placeholder.