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Define the word wild card

wild card
     n 1: an unpredictable factor; "the weather was a wild card"
     2: a playing card whose value can be determined by the person
        who holds it

wild card
     
         (From card games in
        which certain cards, often the joker, can act as any other
        card) A special character or character sequence which matches
        any character in a string comparison, like ellipsis ("...") in
        ordinary written text.
     
        In Unix filenames '?' matches any single character and '*'
        matches any zero or more characters.  In regular expressions, '.' matches any one character and "[...]"
        matches any one of the enclosed characters.
     
        See also Backus-Naur Form.
     
        (1997-07-16)