The word "proxy" can mean more than one thing:
- a person authorized to act for another person, or upon request by another person (see eg.: Proxy murder)
- a political or business proxy representative
- a proxy war is a war where two powers use third parties as a substitute for fighting each other directly.
- a networking server: proxy server
- a design pattern called proxy pattern
- a measurement used in social science surveys or other research as an approximation to a desired measure that is impossible or inconvenient to obtain
- in climate research, a proxy is a measured variable used to infer the value of a variable of interest.
- in collectable card games, a card (usually a cheap or common one) that is marked so as to represent another card (usually a hard-to-get or expensive one). This is illegal in most tournaments, and often disapproved of in casual play.