doodad

• doo-dad (rare)
• dodad, do-dad (rare)
• dodab (rare)

Unknown; attested since the 1880s. Compare earlier daud (“a piece of something”), later doohickey (“a thing (whose name one cannot recall)”). It is something that kid doesn't understand and the dad do to it (do + dad).

• IPA^(key): /ˈduːdæd/

doodad (plural doodads)

1. Used to refer to something whose name one cannot recall: an unspecified device, gadget, part, or thing.

   Synonyms: (Britain) doodah; see also Thesaurus:thingy

   My mom has a clever doodad for peeling oranges.

   • 1922, Sinclair Lewis, chapter I, in Babbitt, New York, N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace and Company, →OCLC, section IV, page 11:

     Of course I eat an apple every evening—an apple a day keeps the doctor away—but still, you ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.

   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep:

     The room was too big, the ceiling was too high, the doors were too tall, and the white carpet that went from wall to wall looked like a fresh fall of snow at Lake Arrowhead. There were full-length mirrors and crystal doodads all over the place.

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
• “doodad”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• Douglas Harper (2001–2023), “doodad”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.

• Wikipedia article on placeholder names