Word.ws English Dictionary

metavariable

metavariable noun: a symbol or string of symbols belonging to a metalanguage and standing for elements of some object language.

Noun

metavariable (plural metavariables)

  1. 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

Forms of metavariable

pluralmetavariables

Origin of metavariable

From meta- + variable.

Questions about metavariable

What does metavariable mean?
Metavariable means a symbol or string of symbols belonging to a metalanguage and standing for elements of some object language.
What part of speech is metavariable?
Metavariable is a noun.
What is the plural of metavariable?
The plural of metavariable is metavariables.

Words near metavariable in the dictionary

  1. metavanadates
  2. metavanadic acid
  3. metavandendriesscheite
  4. metavanmeersscheite
  5. metavanuralite
  6. metavariable
  7. metavariables
  8. metavariant
  9. metavariants
  10. metavariscite
  11. metavauxite

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: metavariable (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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