also wildcard
( wild cards)
1.
If you refer to someone or something as a wild card in a particular situation, you mean that they cause uncertainty because you do not know how they will behave.
The wild card in the picture is eastern Europe.
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2.
If a sports player is given a wild card for a particular competition, they are allowed to play in it, although they have not qualified for it in the usual way. You can also use wild card to refer to a player who enters a competition in this way.
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3.
A wildcard is a symbol such as * or ? which is used in some computing commands or searches in order to represent any character or range of characters. ( COMPUTING )
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