metavariable

English

Etymology

From meta- +‎ variable.

Noun

metavariable (plural metavariables)

1. (logic) A symbol or string of symbols belonging to a metalanguage and standing for elements of some object language.
   • 2006 March 13, Lutz Martin, “Relative Clause Construal”, in The Dynamics of Language‎^[1], Brill, →ISBN, page 85:

     The pragmatic process of substitution requires some given context to provide an appropriate substituend for a metavariable projected by a pronoun.

   • 2016, Aaron Stump, Verified Functional Programming in Agda, page 198:

     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.