What DO you call that thing which is, you know, that, er, doohickey, a “thing that’s too unimportant to have a name of its own, or whose name you have for the moment forgotten”?
One word is veeblefetzer:
A word usually used facetiously as a placeholder name for any obscure or complicated object or mechanism, such as automobile parts, computer code and model railroad equipment.
A 19th-century Yiddish language slang word with limited usage is generally accepted as the origin. In German, the verb weben means to “weave”, while fetzen means to “rip” or “shred”…
[In the 1940s] Alfred J. Gross… invented the walkie-talkie… He was the father of Citizens’ Band radio, and for his “handle” he used the pseudonym “Phineas Thadeus Veeblefetzer”.
A few years later, Harvey Kurtzman brought the word into popular usage in his comic book Mad…
In other words, we’re talking whatchamacallits, such as:
Aglet – the piece of plastic covering the ends of your shoelace
Ferrule – the metal band that connects the pencil eraser to the end of the pencil
Tragus – the little piece of cartilage that sticks out at the front side of your ear.
