whatchamacallit

 xyzwhatchamacallit, thingamajig something

whojamacallit , whodyoumacallit someone  (spelling not as standardized)

​Note the use of -ma- inside the word "Edumacation" for education -- this infix is a humorous (joking) way to make the word sound important.​

​Some usage examples here    here​  (Archived)
​here ​ ... and whodyoumacallit's idiosyncratic English somewhat hard to understand..

There have also been some candy bars with these names! See https://www.hersheyland.com/whatchamacallit and https://www.snackhistory.com/thingamajig/

hammer, screwdriver as whatchmacallit

Whatchamacallit in print dates from as far back as 1920 per Google Ngram here

This snippet of the whatchamacallit worksheet comes from the Arlington Catholic Diocese (source)

Tricia has a blog post here with a dozen more of these placeholder nouns (Archived) . The Free Dictionary lists even more here , some of which I've never heard of.  Interestingly, though, I would understand what to do if someone used one of these words in context. "Hand me that …. " or  "Hand me one of those …s"



Other instances include a popular song, Ella Mai and Chris Brown's Whatchamacallit via YouTube here .

This playlist from @EnglishwithMovies is a collection of movie clips. One shows "whatchamacallit" in dialogs, starting hereThe Voice of America (VOA) has a lengthy post here, which references this video as using doohickey for a motorcycle part that is the “counter balancing chain adjustment." 




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