placeholder

See also: place holder

English

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 *-āzios

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.

placeholder (plural placeholders)

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.
- 2007 August 24, William Grimes, “Uh, Lead My Rips: No More Bloopers”, in The New York Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 4 January 2013:
  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.
- 2013 February 14, Scott Tobias, “A Good Day To Die Hard [film review]”, in The AV Club‎^[2], archived from the original on 10 March 2016:
  "I'm on vacation," [Bruce] Willis grumbles several times throughout A Good Day To Die Hard, in what counts as the film's sole running joke, a lame placeholder until he arrives at the big "yippee-ki-yay" punchline.
(graphical user interface) A non-editable caption initially displayed in a blank text box to indicate its function.

that which holds, denotes or reserves a place for something to come later — see also particle,‎ marker,‎ substitute