Idiom
fill in the blank
Meaning
A placeholder allowing for any of a variety of possible answers or a single elicited answer.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Please fill in the blank with your name.”
“You need to fill in the blank on this medical form.”
“I fill in the blank with my favorite color.”
“The teacher handed out a worksheet and asked the students to fill in the blank for each vocabulary question.”
“The interviewer paused and looked at me, waiting for me to fill in the blank regarding my expected salary for the new position.”
“When he forgot the lyrics during the concert, the audience helped him fill in the blank by singing the chorus loudly.”
“The detective had most of the evidence but needed one more witness to fill in the blank and solve the mystery.”
“In this exercise, you must analyze the context carefully to fill in the blank with the most appropriate word from the provided list.”
Examples
simple
“Please fill in the blank with your name.”
“You need to fill in the blank on this medical form.”
“I fill in the blank with my favorite color.”
contextual
“The teacher handed out a worksheet and asked the students to fill in the blank for each vocabulary question.”
“The interviewer paused and looked at me, waiting for me to fill in the blank regarding my expected salary for the new position.”
“When he forgot the lyrics during the concert, the audience helped him fill in the blank by singing the chorus loudly.”
“The detective had most of the evidence but needed one more witness to fill in the blank and solve the mystery.”
complex
“In this exercise, you must analyze the context carefully to fill in the blank with the most appropriate word from the provided list.”
Origin
A clipping of the noun phrase fill-in-the-blank question or problem. The term represents a functional shortening of the instructional formula, recorded in English without specific attribution to a single author or date of origin.
Key words
Related idioms
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