Erika Mustermann - Esperanto

Esperanto

Esperanto has an all-purpose placeholder suffix um, which has no fixed meaning and simply tells that an object or action has something to do with some purpose or object, for instance butonumi ("to button up" or "to press a button"). It has acquired a specific meaning in some compounds, like brakumi, "to embrace", from brako, "arm".

The placeholder suffix was originally devised as a catch-all derivation affix. Once affixes became routinely used as roots and inflected, um became a placeholder lexeme, which would take affixes of its own: umi "to thingummy", umilo "a thingummy tool", umado "thingummying" etc. A common popular derivative is umaĉi (with pejorative suffix –aĉ–), "to do something fishy". The affix-turned-lexeme aĵo "thing" is also arguably a place holder, since it is less specific than the older lexeme objekto. Afero "business" is a lexeme used as an abstract placeholder.

The particle ajn ('any') can also be used as a placeholder. A generic object may be called io ajn ('anything', 'some thing'), or ajno (informal); the forms ajna ('any kind of') and ajne ('in any way') are acceptable colloquial synthetic variants of the longer and more formal ia ajn and iel ajn.

In the formal definition of Esperanto, the placeholder noun is zozo.