Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Something whose name has been forgotten or is not known.
Wiktionary
- n. a metasyntactic term used for any object whose actual name you don’t know or can’t remember. There are many spellings and many synonyms.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Any object whose name is forgotten, or not known.
WordNet 3.0
- n. something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known
Etymologies
- Shortened version of "what you may call it" or "what you might call it". (Wiktionary)
- Alteration of what you may call it. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“November 7, 2008 at 4: 11 pm cayenne, I retrieved the old masthead / leaderboard / title whatchamacallit from the internet archives.”
“Hey, is it my imagination, or is our masthead / leaderboard / title whatchamacallit reverting to the old format?”
“But how about this whatchamacallit that the Miami Marlins will have at their new stadium?”
“A whatchamacallit between mom bloggers and feminist bloggers?”
“Obese repiggies love Jesus, hate gays and eat lard-slathered meaty whatchamacallit at 3500 calories a serving.”
“There's a reason why Apple banked on a line of I-centered (iPod, iPhone, iTunes, soon-to-be iSlate or iTablet or i-whatchamacallit) digital lifestyle products.”
The Huffington Post: Kill Your Web 2.0 Self -- Or Change It? (VIDEO)
“All he had to do was walk around the whatchamacallit, the circumference of the circle.”
“The other smart move of the remake is putting together a believable military jargon to replace the pointless made-up words of the old series, words like daggit, yahren, and socia-whatchamacallit.”
“The whatchamacallit demonic robot-like thingies somehow reminded me of The Terminator.”
Anime Preview: Spring 2008 First Impressions – Batch 1 « Undercover
“That uh, big whatchamacallit movie you did, you know with the big neo-natal ninja turtle with cooties, got beaten out by a chick flick.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘whatchamacallit’.
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Thingmies
Words that get substituted for a word the person can't call to mind
sort-of, thingy, thingmy, whatsit, whosit, thingmajig, doodah, hing, hingy, whatchamacallit, hoojamaflip, hoosit and 2 more...
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Sounds often heard during a search fo...
um, er, hmm, ah, well, �?��?��?�, erm, uh, um-um-um, ehm, anu, gizmo and 11 more...
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slackagogo's Words
agelast, aggiornamento, zaftig, wowserism, vox barbara, verbigeration, tchotchke, tautology, sycophant, spoonerism, solipsism, sobriquet and 288 more...
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kimo2000's Words
pakalolo, miliated, voodoo, vindaloo, hacienda, acquiesce, addlepated, olio, akimbo, apropos, oogenesis, arugula and 181 more...
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Favorite Words
quixotic, assonance, palindrome, plebeian, mezzanine, propinquity, etymology, antihero, intrepid, refractions, lawless, sesquipedalian and 237 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
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Tuesday words
just the next words that come along
nasality, transignification, lapsarian, disciple, slanguage, atwitter, avast, ahoy, asleep, awake, hymnody, glissade and 573 more...
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dienekes's Words
chutzpah, lexicon, intrepid, pedagogical, schlemiel, schism, erudite, anathema, pugilist, jaunty, paradigm, automaton and 949 more...
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norrell's Words
hush, dove, euphoria, nebulae, bryn mawr, darling, phoenix, nape, cream, butterscotch, cosmos, frost and 190 more...
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amcd56's Words
undisillusioned, truthiness, wikiality, nonunparallel, bafflegab, otiose, snarky, gynotikolobomasso..., battology, unasinous, zaftig, mumbo-jumbo and 122 more...
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Hold My Place
. . . apologetic statesmen of a compromising kind,
Such as--What d'ye call him--Thing'em-bob, and likewise--Never-mind,
and 'St--'st--'st--and What's-his-name, and also You-know-who-- <...whatchamacallit, thingamajig, doodad, doohickey, doojiggy, gizmo, whosis, whatsis, thingamabob, gadget, widget, jobby and 109 more...
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jmjarmstrong's list
Words that I used to know.
geloscopy, hunker, willy nilly, harum scarum, whacko, meh, nork, misunderestimate, atrabiliousness, luftmensch, auxanometer, hyperhedonia and 1948 more...
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exclamations
expletive, blimey, okey dokey, whatchamacallit, oops, ooh, sheesh, lo and behold, phew, golly, bam, yikes and 13 more...
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Contact!
Words for the guessing game of Contact, which is remarkably effective at killing time when you're with 2 or more people. The game is similar to Botticelli.
totemic, fungible, solipsism, copacetic, adamantine, pessary, vivisect, postlapsarian, doggerel, waif, stentorian, zoetrope and 67 more...
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thingie
pass me that...
thingy, whatsit, doodad, gizmo, thingamajig, whatchamacallit, doohickey, boojum, thingamabob, whatnot, widget, thingummy and 18 more...
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Word Nerd
galore, nitty gritty, creepy, spooky, faltschnitzel, orkweibchen, shiny, thingy, vendetta, extravaganza, awesome, kolophon and 49 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for whatchamacallit.
jmjarmstrong JM offers the warning - beware of oojahs, thingumabobs, doohickies and whatchamacallits as objects without proper names are never to be trusted. Feb 1, 2009
slumry thingamajig Jul 25, 2007