Word.ws English Dictionary

oojah

oojah noun: something whose name is unknown or unimportant; a thingy; a whatsit.

Noun

oojah (plural oojahs)

  1. (slang) Something whose name is unknown or unimportant; a thingy; a whatsit.
    • Expect I shall get a raspberry from the old Oojah if I arrive (with the milk) blotto. Never mind, I have not had a backshee binge for years!1919, P.H.M., “Our Translation Prize”, in The Educational Times, page 470
    • Oh, look! your bag's opened itself wide and all the little oojahs have gone down the steps.1935, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

Forms of oojah

pluraloojahs
alternative formhoojah
alternative formooja
alternative formoojar

Origin of oojah

Unknown. Perhaps formed in English from a similar term; compare whosit, whaddayacallit. Perhaps coined as an exotic-sounding nonsense word. Perhaps from Persian or Urdu حجت (hujjat, “argument”), from Arabic حجة (ḥujja, “argument; pretext”). Attested from the early 20th century.

Words formed from oojah

Questions about oojah

What does oojah mean?
Oojah means something whose name is unknown or unimportant; a thingy; a whatsit.
What part of speech is oojah?
Oojah is a noun.
What is the plural of oojah?
The plural of oojah is oojahs.

Words near oojah in the dictionary

  1. ooid
  2. ooidal
  3. ooids
  4. Oois
  5. ooja
  6. oojah
  7. oojah capivvy
  8. oojah-cum-pivvy
  9. oojah-cum-spiff
  10. oojahs
  11. oojamaflip

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oojah (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.

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