Hoge

Hoge is a term that can refer to multiple, unrelated uses in language, culture, and technology. In Japanese programming culture, the term hogehoge is a metasyntactic variable used in example code to stand in for a function, value, or other identifier. It is commonly encountered in tutorials, documentation, and sample code, and is often paired with other placeholders such as fuga and piyo. The exact origin is unclear, but hogehoge has been widely used since the 1990s as a playful filler in code examples.

As a surname and place name, Hoge appears in some Dutch- and Germanic-language communities. It is borne by individuals and can be found in toponymy as a geographic name in regions with Dutch or Germanic linguistic heritage. Etymologies vary by locale.

In broader usage, Hoge also appears as a component of proper nouns or in discussions of onomastics and linguistics, where it exemplifies how short phonetic strings function across languages. The term does not denote a single concept and should be interpreted from context.