metavariable
nounEtymology From meta- + variable.
1
Human sciences, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Sciences A symbol or string of symbols belonging to a metalanguage and standing for elements of some object language.
- The pragmatic process of substitution requires some given context to provide an appropriate substituend for a metavariable projected by a pronoun.2006 March 13, Lutz Martin, “Relative Clause Construal”, in The Dynamics of Language, Brill, →ISBN, page 85:
- If it is a programming language, it will almost always have its own notion of variables, and hence the distinction between object-language variables and metavariables is useful.2016, Aaron Stump, Verified Functional Programming in Agda, page 198: