placeholder

noun

place·​hold·​er ˈplās-ˌhōl-dər 

plural placeholders

1

: a person or thing that occupies the position or place of another person or thing

The bill would empower the governor to appoint a placeholder to a vacant U.S. Senate seat, to serve through the next general election cycle.

—John Sharp

The result was that the legislation represented little more than a placeholder to put the budget before a conference committee …

—Carl Ingram

2

: a symbol in a mathematical or logical expression that may be replaced by the name of any element of a set

3

American football : a player who places and holds the ball upright on the ground for placekicking of a field goal

Examples of placeholder in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Maybe that doesn’t matter much for a team with players like Tij Iginla and Caleb Desnoyers in the pipeline; Hayton can be a placeholder for next year. — Shayna Goldman, New York Times, 6 July 2026

However, Putin picked another longtime associate, Dmitry Medvedev, to serve as his placeholder until reclaiming the presidency in 2012. — ABC News, 26 June 2026

The rough cut used very early placeholder audio for Gizmo and the Gremlins, and those sounds completely pulled you out of the movie. — Jim Hemphill, IndieWire, 23 June 2026

Filed as an ‘intent-to-use’ application, the paperwork functions as a legal placeholder for a product that hasn’t officially launched yet. — Mrigakshi Dixit, Interesting Engineering, 22 June 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1927, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for placeholder

• officeholder
• beholder
• bondholder
• cardholder
• freeholder
• householder
• landholder
• leaseholder
• lienholder
• shareholder
• slaveholder
• smallholder

Kids Definition

placeholder

noun

place·​hold·​er ˈplās-ˌhōl-dər 

: a symbol used in mathematics in the place of a numeral not yet known