hootenanny

Noun

hootenanny (plural hootenannies)

1. An informal, festive performance by folk singers, often including audience participation with the use of acoustic instruments.
   • The brain matches the mind-image of doughnuts to images and emotions stored in his brain’s memory regions: “Mmmm … doughnuts.” Then—bingo!—his brain’s dopamine-producing reward centres light up and have a rip-roaring hootenanny.2012 December 21, Monique Keiran, “Humans get more nutrition from tastier food”, in Times Colonist, 155th year, number 10, Victoria, B.C.: TC Publication Limited Partnership, →ISSN, →OCLC, page A13...
   • It bespoke country’s devotion to realism, to songs about Saturday night’s hootenanny and Sunday morning’s moral reckoning, not to mention the kitchen-table truths of Monday through Friday.2013 August 11, Jody Rosen, “Jody Rosen on the Rise of Bro-Country”, in New York Magazine
2. (obsolete) A placeholder word for a nonspecific or forgotten thing.

   Synonyms:

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