doodad
noun (informal)

- anything whose name you cannot remember or do not know.

- a small object whose name you have forgotten or do not know.

- an ornamental attachment or decoration.

- decorative embellishment; trinket; bauble.

Cambridge Dictionary, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary Com

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WORD ORIGIN

The origin of “doodad” is unknown. It appeared in American English around the end of the nineteenth century, although dictionaries disagree about the earliest surviving example. Merriam-Webster dates it to 1877; Etymonline records it from 1898; the Oxford English Dictionary’s current evidence begins with Sinclair Lewis in 1920.

It is probably a deliberately invented, rhythmical word—a verbal stand-in resembling doohickey, thingamajig and whatchamacallit. Its repeated d sounds make it easy to produce while the mind searches for something more precise.

The spelling "doodah" also occurs, particularly in British English.

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ECHOES IN ENGLISH

A "doodad" is the word we reach for when the real name won't come. And it's a funny little word in its own right — doo-dad, two beats that almost echo each other.

English is full of words built from a repeated or nearly-repeated sound, and once you start noticing them, such echoes are everywhere.

Say a few out loud: knick-knack, flip-flop, bric-a-brac, tick-tock, ding-dong, criss-cross, zig-zag. Linguists call this "reduplication".

It comes in a few forms. Sometimes the two halves rhyme, like hocus-pocus, super-duper, hoity-toity, or okey-dokey. Sometimes a word just repeats outright — bye-bye, night-night, so-so, no-no. But the most common kind is where the vowel changes on the second beat, and it always changes in the same order. We say flip-flop, never flop-flip. We say tick-tock, never tock-tick. Same with sing-song, ping-pong, mishmash, dilly-dally, wishy-washy. Nobody teaches us this rule, but we all follow it without thinking. It's the same reason "the Big Bad Wolf" sounds right and "the Bad Big Wolf" sounds broken.

Part of the pleasure is just rhythm — two stressed beats knocking together, like a little drum pattern. It's easy to say and easy to remember, which is why so many of these words stick around for centuries.

But there's also something weird about it. This kind of doubling belongs to baby talk — bye-bye, night-night — so it always sounds a bit playful and a bit unserious, even when adults use it.

And notice how many of these words are gently putting something down. Chit-chat is talk that doesn't matter. Dilly-dally is wasting time. Wishy-washy, mumbo-jumbo, riff-raff, namby-pamby, hoity-toity — nearly all of them are mild insults. And the echoic sound tells us not to take the thing too seriously.

So, to make words stick,… just repeat the beat!

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

bauble, bibelot, contraption, curio, dingus, DOODAD, doodah, doohickey, doojigger, gadget, gewgaw, gimcrack, gizmo, gubbins, knick-knack, tchotchke, thingamabob, thingamajig, thingummy, thingy, trinket, whatchamacallit, whatnot, whatsit, widget

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

“I love searching for DOODADS in second hand shops.”

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