Word.ws English Dictionary

whatchamacallit

Syllables: what·cha·ma·call·itUK/ˈwɒtʃəməˌkɔːlɪt//ˈwʌt͡ʃəməˌkɔlɪt/

whatchamacallit noun: a metasyntactic term used for any object whose actual name the speaker does not know or cannot remember; a doodad, gizmo, thingamajig, thingy.

Noun

whatchamacallit (plural whatchamacallits or whatchamacallem or whatchamacall'em)

  1. (colloquial) A metasyntactic term used for any object whose actual name the speaker does not know or cannot remember; a doodad, gizmo, thingamajig, thingy.
    • The Thingamajig and the Wachamacallit.1921, Johnny Gruelle, Orphant Annie Story Book, Volume 7, page 69
    • You’re—you must be the whatchamacallit, huh? The peer.1969, J[ames] P[inckney] Miller, stage adaptation by F. Andrew Leslie, The People Next Door, New York, N.Y.: Dramatists Play Service, →OCLC, act II, page 42
    Synonyms:
    thingy

whatchamacallit meaning in Tagalog

whatchamacallit in Tagalog

any object the actual name of which the speaker does not know or cannot remember
yung ano

Examples of whatchamacallit in a sentence

  • Performing some kind of whatchamacallit deed.1972, Carolyn Lane, Child of Air: A One Act Play, Denver, Colo.: Pioneer Drama Service, →OCLC, page 13:
  • 'Cause whatchamacallit, he always used to doctor me …1996, Corbett Mack, as told by Michael Hittman, “Boyhood (1892–1905)”, in Corbett Mack: The Life of a Northern Paiute (Studies in the...
  • "Think we ought to check this whatchamacallit?" / "No, that doodad over there seems to be the problem."1998, David Alan Black, “There’s No Place Like Rome: The Parts of Speech and Their Function”, in It’s still Greek to Me: An...
  • We have orders that if these EMP whatchamacallits can't be secured then they must be destroyed.2014 October, Don Pendleton, chapter 15, in Domination Bid (Don Pendleton’s Stony Man: America’s Ultra-covert Intelligence Agency; Gold...

Synonyms of whatchamacallit

Forms of whatchamacallit

pluralwhatchamacallits
pluralwhatchamacallem
pluralwhatchamacall'em
alternative formwhat-you-may-call-it

Origin of whatchamacallit

Univerbation and contraction of what you may call it. United States, 20th century (recorded in 1921).

Questions about whatchamacallit

What does whatchamacallit mean?
Whatchamacallit means a metasyntactic term used for any object whose actual name the speaker does not know or cannot remember; a doodad, gizmo, thingamajig, thingy.
What is whatchamacallit in Tagalog?
Whatchamacallit in Tagalog is yung ano. See Whatchamacallit meaning in Tagalog.
How do you use whatchamacallit in a sentence?
Performing some kind of whatchamacallit deed.
What part of speech is whatchamacallit?
Whatchamacallit is a noun.
How do you pronounce whatchamacallit?
Whatchamacallit is pronounced /ˈwɒtʃəməˌkɔːlɪt/ (UK).
What is the plural of whatchamacallit?
The plural of whatchamacallit is whatchamacallits.

Words near whatchamacallit in the dictionary

  1. whatchamacallems
  2. whatchamacaller
  3. whatchamacallher
  4. whatchamacallhim
  5. whatchamacallim
  6. whatchamacallit
  7. whatchamacallits
  8. whatchamahoozie
  9. whatchamahoozies
  10. whatcheeriid
  11. whatcheeriids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whatchamacallit (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-whatchamacallit.ogg, en-au-whatchamacallit.ogg.

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