What does "whatchamacallit" mean?

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 a synonym for "whatchamacallit"?

Common synonyms include: chingadera, chummy, dingbat, dingus, dohickey, dojigger.

Pronounced //ˈwɒtʃəməkɔːlɪt//.

//ˈwɒtʃəməkɔːlɪt// noun, slang

noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level

Noun

1
A metasyntactic term used for any object whose actual name the speaker does not know or cannot remember; a doodad, gizmo, thingamajig, thingy. slang
"The Thingamajig and the Wachamacallit."
2
something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known wordnet

"I forgot my whatchamacallit in the taxi."

Clipping of what-you-may-call-it. United States, 20th century (recorded in 1921).

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.