Editor’s Note: Reader Michael Stern authored this post for our summer enjoyment. Consider how many “doodad” or “doololly” or “doojolly” words relate to this neologism. Etymology Online does not give this origin but notes it to be an American neologism from 1914. Now on to Michael’s post.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines doohickey as a “doodad,” which is itself defined as “an often small article whose common name is unknown or forgotten: gadget.” The OED defines it as “any small object, esp. mechanical; a ‘thingummy.” Neither offer a useful derivation but I happened upon what might be a reasonable and interesting one.
On July 9, 1776, Virginia patriots attacked Lord Dunmore and his supporters who were holed up on Gwynn’s Island in Chesapeake Bay. Embedded with the patriots was a French artillery captain who had joined the Continental Army. He built an experimental wooden mortar which was put to use in the attack, only to explode, killing him. He was the only casualty on the patriot side. His name was Dohicky Arundel.
Perhaps Arundel’s given name became a synonym for a nameless contraption (although more than a hundred years would pass before its first recorded use in Kansas Farmer in 1908, according to the OED.)
My source for this information is A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution by Andrew Lawler. My wife and I attended a lecture by Lawler at UR a few months ago and, needless to say, we purchased his book.
Send us words, thingamabobs, whatchamacallits, linguistic kluges, and metaphors worth covering. Email me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leave a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!
See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.
Creative-Commons Image: Sleepypete’s blog. Thanks, Pete.