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.
I knew someone who used “pooter valve” to refer to some of the more obscure parts on a car.
thanks to you i can add ‘unknown’ words to my vocalbulary 😉
Interesting information.
I shall try to remember this word. Thanks for taking care of my blog. I return next week Tuesday. Could you excuse me again for not visiting bloggers, except those who write to my blog of course . Thanks!
Wil, ABCW Team
Veeblefetzer!!! Rolls off the tongue quite nicely, and will do quite nicely when words escape me…
Oh my, Veeblefetzers are in my vocabulary constantly.
This is a great word I will use…
That’s too hard to pronounce.
My ABC WEDNESDAY
For what it’s worth, the person who runs veeblefetzer.com has been shamed into doing a site update.
This line was already there:
“In German, ‘Fetzer’ is any contraption, while ‘Veeble’ is a likely corruption of ‘Webel’ — meaning weaving. Textile mills of this period were crammed with very complicated, wildly active and very loud pieces of machinery.”
Exactly.
Now to figure out “potrzebie.”
(Massive credit to FJ for tossing “axolotl” into one of my posts earlier this week, so Mad’s three maddest words are now covered. Sort of.)
Go! It is the first time I hear it!
Ferrule is also the name given to the metal band that holds the bristles of a paint brush in place. Blessings!
I have no Veebelfetzer anymore ! What a word !
Gattina
ABC Team
Wow that’s a world and a half, Yiddish words are usually snappier I think I’ll stick with widget.
Great! I also like ‘whosis’ and ‘thingamabobber’, although lots of times friends and I now use BS terms from scifi movies: flux capacitor, eludium-Q explosive space modulator, compression coil, Jeffries tubes….
Well that’s all new to me…
And all these years I thought it began with an F! Never seen it written before. We pronounce it Feeblefester.
Ferrule: I used to bite on the Ferrule, that was when my dad bought cheap pencils. Recently I was given some cheap pencils, and the kids grab them for the Ferrule.
Hmmm, oh yeah, that thing. Why it’s called a veeblefetzer. Huh? That other thing. It’s a veeblefetzer. He-he, I’m ready to use the term.
A walking stick has a rubber ferrule at the base to help it grip the ground!
Best wishes,
Di.
ABCW team.
Wow now that is what I called super duper long handle.
I’m going to start using that word, Veeblefetzer, even though spell checkers don’t like it. I’ll use it alongside the word Dingerdoo, which means any useless object that is meant solely to be displayed in a cabinet, such as glass figurines or souvenirs.
…Okay, I admit it. I made up that word. But I use it all the time and almost always the meaning is immediately understood. But, I learned, never tell a shopkeeper who sells small antiques that their store is full of dingerdoos. They will consider that a deprecating insult.