Thingy

How to spell thingy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce thingy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does thingy mean?

1. nounAn informal placeholder for an object whose name the speaker cannot recall or chooses not to state.

Thingy in a sentence

• He rummaged in the drawer for the little thingy that holds the cable in place.

• She pointed at the plastic thingy on the dashboard and asked what it did.

Where does thingy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a modern, colloquial spin on the very old word 'thing', which in Old English was 'thing' (written 'þing') and originally meant a public meeting or assembly where matters were settled. Over centuries the sense drifted from the gathering itself to the matters discussed there, and finally to any object or item at all, which is the everyday meaning we now take for granted. The casual ending '-y' was tacked on much later as a familiar, almost affectionate diminutive, the same playful suffix found in words like 'doggy' or 'mummy'. The result, recorded in informal English from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is a handy placeholder for an object whose proper name escapes the speaker. The spelling trap is mild: it is simply 'thing' with a 'y', not the alternative '-ie' ending that some writers reach for by analogy with words like 'doggie'.

How the word is built

• thing (object)
• -y (informal/diminutive suffix)