wildcard

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wildcard

Where it comes from

From wild + card.

noun wildcards

  1. A character that takes the place of any other character or string that is not known or specified. 1968, Digital Equipment Corporation, VAX/VMS 319(5864), page 751, Section 2.1.2 Using Wildcard Characters A wildcard character is a symbol that you can use with many DCL commands to apply the command to several files at once, rather than specifying each file individually.
  2. An uncontrolled or unpredictable element. There are several technical wildcards, such as how the larger battery packs--four times larger than those of the Prius--will withstand the rigors of city driving, […]
  3. An element, often deliberately concealed, which is withheld for contingency.
  4. alternative Alternative form of wild card German wildcard Sabine Lisicki conquered her nerves to defeat France's Marion Bartoli and take her amazing Wimbledon run into the semi-finals.
  5. A letter or symbol that substitutes for a generic or poorly identified sound, for example capital C for any or some consonant, or capital V for any or some vowel.

verb wildcards · wildcarding · wildcarded

  1. To replace or supplement with a wildcard character to allow matching against a range of possible values. The unfortunate consequence is that document elements cannot be wildcarded because a schema needs to provide a closed list of possible document elements.

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: substitution, substitute, surrogate, generic, reverse, inverse, alternative, catch-all, placeholder, wild-card, wildcat, j. random, character, randomer, joker, wildcatter

Translations

Every language

noun uncontrolled or unpredictable element

中文未知数 wèizhīshù
Françaisélectron libre
Ελληνικάμπαλαντέρ balantér

noun special character

Españolcomodín
한국어와일드카드 waildeukadeu
日本語ワイルドカード wairudokādo
中文通配符 tōngpèifú
Portuguêscoringa, curinga
Françaisjoker
DeutschPlatzhalter
Ελληνικάχαρακτήρας μπαλαντέρ charaktíras balantér
Românăjoker, wildcard
Русскийзнак подстано́вки znak podstanóvki, шабло́н šablón, си́мвол-джо́кер símvol-džóker

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MLA

"wildcard." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/wildcard. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

wildcard. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/wildcard

Chicago

"wildcard." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/wildcard.

BibTeX
@misc{wildcard_2026,
  title = {wildcard},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/wildcard},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}