hootenanny

plural hootenannies

1. entertainmentAn informal, festive performance by folk singers, often including audience participation with the use of acoustic instruments.

   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

   1 more example

   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, column 4

2. obsoleteA placeholder word for a nonspecific or forgotten thing.

   Synonyms: thingamajig, Sorted by number of Google hits, widget, hickey, gizmo, thingy, gimmick, thingie