thingamabob

plural thingamabobs · alternative thingamabobber · alternative thingamybob · alternative thingmabob · alternative thingumabob · alternative thingumbob · alternative thingumebob · alternative thingummabob · alternative thingummybob · alternative thingymabob

1. slangA thing or person whose actual name is unknown or forgotten.

   "The tin thingamabob," insisted Mr. Trigget with slow dignity. "Call it what you will. Its purpose is self-evident. It acts as a dispirator—a distributor, that is to say—"

   1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC

   1 more example

   The front hall was graced with door chimes, a white-eyed wooden thingamabob of commercial Mexican origin, and that banal darling of the arty middle class, van Gogh’s “Arlsienne.”

   1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 10, in Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC

   Synonyms: thingy, whatshisname