metaclass

meta- +‎ class

metaclass (plural metaclasses)

1. (object-oriented programming) A class that serves as a template for other classes rather than objects.
   • 1997, John Hunt, Smalltalk and Object Orientation: An Introduction, Springer Science & Business Media, →ISBN, page 345:

     That is, all metaclasses (such as Collection class, Object class and Set class) are instances of the class Metaclass. This is because all metaclasses have the same behavior. They define the structure, definition and behavior of a class.

   • 2009, David Beazley, Python Essential Reference, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 139:

     First, the class can explicitly specify its metaclass by either setting a __metaclass__ class variable (Python 2), or supplying the metaclass keyword argument in the tuple of base classes (Python 3).

• metatype

• classmate