placeholder

1. One who holds an office or place, especially:
   1. One who acts as a deputy or proxy.
   2. One who holds an appointed office in a government.
2. In a mathematical or logical expression, a symbol that may be replaced by the name of any element of a set.
3. In the decimal form of a number, a digit that is not significant.

The noun has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: a person authorized to act for another
  Synonyms: proxy, procurator

Meaning #2: a symbol in a logical or mathematical expression that can be replaced by the name of any member of specified set

Look up placeholder in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A placeholder is a general term, sign or symbol, which is used in place of a specific unknown or irrelevant term or value.

Placeholder may also refer to:

In language:

• Placeholder name, words that can refer to objects or people, whose names are unknown or irrelevant
• Filler text, shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated
• Lorem ipsum, text used to demonstrate the font, typography or layout in a document

In mathematics and computer science:

• Free variables and bound variables, symbols that will later be replaced by some literal string
• Metasyntactic variable, alias term used to denote the subject matter under discussion

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