Talk:Placeholder word
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Source of interest
[edit]Petra M. Vogel, "Dingsbums and Thingy: Placeholders for Names in German and Other Languages", in Complex Words: Advances in Morphology, Lívia Körtvélyessy and Pavol Štekauer, eds. (Cambridge University Press; 2020), p. 362-383. ~~!! BD2412 T 16:28, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
@BD2412: Good find. It allowed me to trace further, e.g., the german term. No dictionary will give it:
Was sind passe-partout-Wörter?
Das sind Platzhalterwort|Platzhalterwörter. Wörter, die anstelle eines anderen Wortes verwendet werden.
Beispiele sind Dings, Dingsbums, Zeug, Teil, usw.
Ich hab diese Zeug vom Automechatro... mechani... Autoheini geholt, da war auch dieses Dings dabei, was man in dieses.... große, räumige Teil vorne im Auto reinbaut - neben den vier länglichen.... Teilen.
Fett markiert sind hier sog. Passepartoutwörter - sie dienen ausschließlich dazu, als Platzhalter zu dienen, beispielsweise, weil dem Redner die richtigen Bezeichnungen nicht bekannt sind oder sie ihm gerade nicht einfallen.
What are the passepartout words?
These are placeholder words. Words that are used in place of another word.
Examples are thing, thingamajig, stuff, part, etc.
I got this stuff from the auto mechanic... mechanic... car guy, and they also included this thing that you put into this... large, spacious part at the front of the car - next to the four long... parts.
So-called passepartout words are marked in bold here - they serve exclusively as placeholders, for example, because the speaker doesn't know the correct terms or can't think of them at the moment.
@BD2412:As you may guess, me aint no linguistic expert, so it will take a considerable time to digest and summarize the enormous amount of sources on the subject, somehow completely missed by Wikipedia. I will proceed in a piecemeal manner, hoping to tidy up when the article fleshens. --Altenmann >talk 17:57, 10 August 2025 (UTC)
TODO
[edit]Russian profanity (mat) is a rich source of placeholder words constructed from the "three pillars of mat" the words that correspond to "dick", "cunt" and "fuck" with a rich variety of prefixes and suffixes. There is even a joke about an American spy who penetrated a Russian top-secret rocket facility, but could not figure out anything. In his report he complained "It seems that everything is constructed from only three parts: khuyovina ['dick-thingy'], pizdyulina ['cunt-thingy'] and poyeben ['fuck-thingy'], and what is most puzzling is that they are completely interchangeable!" --Altenmann >talk 20:10, 10 August 2025 (UTC)