User:DCDuring/placeholder terms

In Wiktionary we use the pronouns someone, somebody, something, one, oneself and their possessives as placeholders for personal pronouns, nouns (including proper names), and noun phrases in the main entry for a multi-word expression ("MWE"). Interpreting these placeholders can be difficult for language learners and sometimes even for native speakers, particularly when the entry is a verb phrase and common usage includes passive forms of the verb phrase and possibly two different placeholders.

We often have redirects, hard or soft, from the often numerous forms with various inflected forms of the verb and various pronouns for the placeholders.

On occasion an entry may show no placeholder at all, even though one may seem warranted.

Placeholder pronouns

• Someone or somebody are placeholders for which the typical replacement is a term indicating a person or persons. Less typically, but often the replacement can be a group of people (eg, crowd, organization), an organism (especially an animal, such as a mammal), or a group of organisms (eg, flock, herd, pack).
• Something is a placeholder that can be limited to non-humans or may also include the referents covered by someone or somebody.
• One and oneself are placeholders used when the replacement refers to the same entity as the subject of the clause in which the MWE is used.

Use in simple MWEs

Simple cases include noun phrases ("NP"s), verb phrases, and prepositional phrases that have only one placeholder.