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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

xyzzy en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • zĭz'i
  • (UK) audio
  • /ˈzɪzi/

Etymology

From the seminal text adventure game Adventure (c.1975), where it served as a "magic word"; possibly originated as a mnemonic for the subscripts of the cross product in mathematics.

Meanings

  1. (uncountable) Used as a placeholder word or metasyntactic variable.
    • The path that relates xyzzy to XYZZY cycles many times through the single state of the transducer. 2005, Ruslan Mitkov, The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics:
    • Suppose stock xyzzy is selling at $100.00 on January 1, 2002. The classic call option is to pay a fixed amount per share (say $10) for the option to buy... 2002, Mark Gaynor, Network Services Investment Guide:
    • Perl doesn't care if you call your loop labels things like XYZZY or PLUGH. 2008, Randal L Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, Brian Foy, Learning Perl:
    • Especially bad are "magic words" from computer games, such as xyzzy. These magic words look secret and unguessable, but in fact they are widely known. 2001, Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford, Web Security, Privacy and Commerce:
    • How you even form the sentence makes a difference; if you say, "We need technology xyzzy because...," then the battle for common sense is already lost. 2006, Venkat Subramaniam, Andy Hunt, Practices of an Agile Developer: