Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either temporarily forgotten, irrelevant or unknown in the context in which it is being discussed. "Whatchamacallit" (for objects) and "Whatshisname" or "Whatshername" (for men and women, respectively) are defining examples.
These placeholders typically function grammatically as nouns and can be used for people (e.g., John Doe, Jane Doe), objects (e.g., Widget) or pla...
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Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either temporarily forgotten, irrelevant or unknown in the context in which it is being discussed. "Whatchamacallit" (for objects) and "Whatshisname" or "Whatshername" (for men and women, respectively) are defining examples.
These placeholders typically function grammatically as nouns and can be used for people (e.g., John Doe, Jane Doe), objects (e.g., Widget) or places (e.g., Timbuktu). They share a property with pronouns, because their referents must be supplied by context.
Stuart Berg Flexner and Harold Wentworth’s Dictionary of American Slang (1960), uses the term kadigan to describe placeholder words. They define kadigan merely as a synonym for thingamajig; if so, then kadigan is itself a kadigan. The term may have originated with Willard R. Espy, though others, such as David Annis, also used it (or cadigans) in their writing. Its etymology is obscure—Flexner and Wentworth related it to the generic...
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