Don from San Mateo, Florida, recalls that when he asked his mother what he was getting for Christmas, she’d reply with: I got you a fastareus. It’s bigger than a breadbox and smaller than an elephant. His father also used fastareus as a placeholder...
Images of birds flutter inside lots of English words and phrases, from “nest egg” and “pecking order,” to proverbs from around the world—including a lovely Spanish saying about how birds sense light just before dawn. Plus, how do you define “fun”...
Monica in Burlington, Vermont, understood right away when a friend said her day got kerfunkulated. Words such as thingamajiggy, doohickey, whatchamacallit, and dumaflache work as placeholders, filling a gap when speakers do not need, or do not want...
Alvin in Huntsville, Alabama, is a fan of the multipurpose noun chumpie, which he learned from a native Philadelphian. He remembers hearing it on the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when actor Will Smith, who is originally from...
A hootenanny, commonly thought of as a party in Appalachia, is also a term for German pancakes. But when you look in the Dictionary of American Regional English, you’ll notice that hootenanny is synonymous with doohickey or thingamajig, and can...
What’s a doomaflatchie? A listener shares this alternate for doohickie, thingamajig, doodad, or any other one of those whatchamacalits. Here’s the Tim McGraw song about his doomaflatchie. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
