whatchamacallum

1. 1.

   something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known

   “she eased the ball-shaped doodad back into its socket”

   “there may be some great new gizmo around the corner that you will want to use”

   Synonymsdoodaddoohickeydoojiggergimmickgizmogismogubbinsthingamabobthingumabobthingmabobthingamajigthingumajigthingmajigthingummy

   Broaderstuff

Other forms of whatchamacallum

plural

whatchamacallums·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about whatchamacallum

What does whatchamacallum mean?

whatchamacallum means "something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known".

How many syllables are in whatchamacallum?

whatchamacallum has 5 syllables: what-cha-ma-cal-lum. The stress falls on "ma".

What is another word for whatchamacallum?

Close synonyms include doodad, doohickey, doojigger, gimmick, gizmo. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is whatchamacallum a common word?

whatchamacallum is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.