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

If such a record was found, the team member removed it, separated it, recorded the box where it was located and replaced the sensitive document with a placeholder sheet, prosecutors explained in their filing. —Melissa Quinn, CBS News, 25 June 2024

Listen to this article GOP firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert has caught a political break as Colorado Republicans picked a placeholder candidate to run in a special election that had threatened to complicate her bid to switch districts and win a safer seat. —Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News, 29 Mar. 2024

The dummy book would act as a placeholder, and a patron who wanted to borrow the item would then have to ask staff to retrieve it. —Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman, 27 June 2024

Millions watch on disney+ The Muppet Movie Year: 1979 Runtime: 1h 35m Director: James Frawley Consider this entry a placeholder for the entire film legacy of the Muppets that lives on Disney+, although the first movie is probably still the best. —Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 3 June 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1927, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Kids Definition

placeholder

noun

place·​hold·​er ˈplās-ˌhōl-dər 

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