Customer Reviews

The Whatchamacallit: Those Everyday Objects You Just Can't Name (And Things You Think You Know About, but Don't)

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After such an exhaustive title there's no need for me to explain what this book covers. Faithful readers of my entries already know I am mad keen on English vocabulary, and this little treasure has proven most illustrative.

I first gazed over the table of contents, which is a list of the terms explored, and tried finding some which I already knew. I was pleasantly surprised at recognizing several of them:

aglet, which is the plastic casing which seals off the end of a shoelace

borborygmus, the gurgling sounds emitted from the stomach

crozier, the ceremonial shepherd's crook bourne by bishops, cardinals, and the Pope

fontanelle, the soft spot on a baby's head

interrobang, a double-duty punctuation mark that looks like this ?!

philtrum, the small indentation between the upper lip and nose

Of course I was terribly interested in the many other words I'd never learned. Some of the more interesting ones include:

caruncula, the tiny pink corner of the eyeball (and the medical term for "sleepy dust" is rheum, which accumulates in the caruncula)

drupelets, the little globules that compose a raspberry or blackberry

grawlix, a string of symbols used to represent a spoken obscenity in a cartoon

muselet, the small wire cage used to keep the cork in place on a champagne bottle

purlicue, the span of measurement made between the extension of the index finger and thumb
rowel, the spiked, revolving wheel located at the tip of a spur on a cowboy boot

tmesis, the deliberate hyphenation of a word for effect (i.e., un-freaking-fair)

The authors not only elaborate as to what each word describes, but many articles list similar terms as well. An example is the entry for tmesis, which also elucidates the reader on other lesser-heard figures of speech, such as antonomasia (using a proper name to describe someone, such as "She's such a Martha Stewart" for a woman who is freakishly obsessed with crafting overdone dinner parties) and metonymy (using the name of a facet of something to describe the thing in it's entirety, such as referring to Harrisburg when one really means the state government of the Commonwealth).

Each entry's language of origin and, where applicable, inventor (grawlix is apparently but one of a lexicon of cartoon terms coined by Mort Walker, author of the venerated strip Beetle Bailey) are very capably discussed as well.

The Whatchamacallit is certain to entertain and edify the vocabularean in all of us.

"The Whatchamacallit," by Danny Danziger and Mark McCrum, is a brief (just under two hundred page) compendium of "everyday objects you just can't name." The authors list their selections alphabetically and occasionally provide pronunciation, etymology, and other factoids. Readers will be surprised at how few entries are truly eye-opening. Being a lover of cold cereal, I was interested in the word for "the dusty remnants at the bottom of cereal boxes." These crumby and useless leftovers are known as "fines." I always hate it when I get down to the fines in my box of Wheaties.

I also got a kick out of "interrobang," the "eloquent punctuation mark" used to indicate incredulity: "'She said what?!'" It is strange that the authors, who are experienced writers, list "tine," "schwa," "gasket," and "cumulonimbus," words that most educated people already know. Then there are the "I don't care words." Why would we need to be familiar with "pediddle," a car with one of its headlights dark or "gari," the pink pickled ginger that is served with sushi?

This book certainly has variety, listing terms from the worlds of food, aviation, anatomy, fashion, literature, music, and religion. "The Whatchamacallit" is most entertaining when the authors go off on riffs: For the entry, "tip cup," which is part of an umbrella, Danziger and McCrum offer a brief history of the umbrella. On the aforementioned page that explains the word "fines," we are treated to a bit of background on the origins of cold cereal. Then there are the three pages following the definition of "Niqaab" that exhaustively describe the coverings worn by Muslim women. This is a quick read, worth browsing for the few items that may enlighten or amuse you. Would I spend twenty-three dollars to purchase it? Indubitably not.

A quirky selection of oddities that the writers choose to explore in greater or lesser depth. Everybody is likely to find here a word or two he didn't know; nobody is likely to find them all unfamiliar. One objection is that some entries are based on British usage, others on American, without being so identified; the terms are not always the same in each case.

I had been looking to purchase the book for a while and finally saw a great deal for this book on Amazon. Book arrived in a timely manner and was exactly what I was looking for.

I love quirky words. Just wish I could remember all of them as I have about 10 dictionary's with odd words.

I didn't find this as interesting as I had hoped, as it turned out, I knew about half of what is included.

Being a linguistics nerd, I was really looking forward to reading this book and learning about the names for things that we use and can't name, along with learning the history behind the word development. The authors did that sparingly throughout the book, while sometimes descending into tangents filled with other jargon that is not necessarily known to those outside the field (crozier, anyone?).

The volume is slight, clocking in at 200 pages, along with illustrations and lots of wasted space that could have been filled with other words that are on the tip of the tongue but oft forgot. Also, to any well read person, a lot of these words were already known, and I would have preferred them to go a more obscure route than they did.

Awesome book - very interesting - lots of stuff to learn about things that you know nothing about - Quick read and something to share with all your friends.