placeholder

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree English place Proto-Germanic *haldaną Proto-West Germanic *haldan Old English healdan Middle English holden English hold Proto-Indo-European *-yósder. Proto-Italic *-āzijos Latin -āriusnom. Latin -āriusbor. Proto-Germanic *-ārijaz Proto-West Germanic *-ārī Old English -ere Middle English -ere English -er English holder English placeholder From place + holder.

1. Something used or included temporarily or as a substitute for something that is not known or must remain generic; that which holds, denotes or reserves a place for something to come later.

   “This data is a placeholder, so you'll want to include the real numbers as soon as you have them.”

   “As the years go by, speech reverts to childhood levels of disfluency, with more pauses, more errors, more repeated words, but even the peak years are not great: up to 8 percent of the average person’s word output consists of meaningless fillers and placeholders like um, uh and er.”

2. A non-editable caption initially displayed in a blank text box to indicate its function.