doodad

/ˈduːdæd/

doodad noun: used to refer to something whose name one cannot recall: an unspecified device, gadget, part, or thing.

Noun

doodad (plural doodads)

Used to refer to something whose name one cannot recall: an unspecified device, gadget, part, or thing.
- My mom has a clever doodad for peeling oranges.
- Of course I eat an apple every evening—an apple a day keeps the doctor away—but still, you ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter I, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, section IV, page 11
Synonyms:

doodah, Sorted by number of Google hits, widget, hickey, gizmo, thingy, gimmick, thingie, jigger, gismo

Synonyms of doodad

doodah
Sorted by number of Google hits
widget
hickey
gizmo
thingy
gimmick
thingie
jigger
gismo

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of doodad

Forms of doodad

plural	doodads
alternative form	doo-dad
alternative form	dodad
alternative form	do-dad
alternative form	dodab

Origin of doodad

Unknown; attested since the 1880s. Compare earlier daud (“a piece of something”), later doohickey (“a thing (whose name one cannot recall)”), dialectal dad, dadge (“a large piece, chunk”).

Questions about doodad

What does doodad mean?: Doodad means used to refer to something whose name one cannot recall: an unspecified device, gadget, part, or thing.
What part of speech is doodad?: Doodad is a noun.
How do you pronounce doodad?: Doodad is pronounced /ˈduːdæd/.
What is the plural of doodad?: The plural of doodad is doodads.

Words near doodad in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: doodad (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “doodad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/doodad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.