In C programming, a temporary variable is a variable with a short lifetime, usually used to hold data that will soon be discarded or before it can be placed at a more permanent memory location. Temporary variables are usually declared as local variables, meaning they have local scope. In C programming, the term "temp" is often used as a variable name for something that will be deleted soon or will soon become out of scope. A common use of a temporary variable in C programming is for swapping the contents of two variables. To swap the contents of two variables, a temporary variable is used to hold the value of one variable while the other variable is overwritten.