Word: thingamajig
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When De Gaulle was out of power, he liked to describe the continual shifts of Ministers in the Fourth Republic's Cabinets by saying, "Chose, machin, chouette [thingamabob, thingamajig, whosit] are being replaced by chouette, machin, chose." He often referred to members of the National Assembly as pisse froid or pisse vinaigre. In private, he often called France "vacharde"-inert or uninspired. The fact was that France offered De Gaulle too limited a scope and power base. Try as he might, he could not change the basic reality that France simply lacked the specific gravity to offset the force...
...wildly inaccurate: U.S. sales to Japan and Canada alone in 1962 totaled almost twice as much as its $3.6 billion in exports to the Common Market. With Britain's exclusion, said le grand Charles, the U.S. is now "making use of England" to create "a vast new trade thingamajig with the Irish, the Icelanders, and so forth." Then De Gaulle turned his remarks to the West Germans, for whom he had some advice on how to govern themselves. "What is needed in Germany," he declared, "is a constitution that would permit it to face modern conditions." (Germany...
...Princess Cicogna's the talk was about Allied officers. The English and American officers are darlings too. So helpful. So impressionable. Lieut. General Mark Clark came to dinner. Brigadier General Edgar Erskine Hume, too, who ran that A.M.G. thingamajig...
...collection of doodads on the desk of Doodaddict Franklin D. Roosevelt was added a thingamajig that would have gladdened the heart of any patriotic hex. It was a figure of Adolf Hitler, leaning over like a fraternity pledge awaiting a paddle. On its rump, a pincushion...
...fool was that the dumfool was prob'ly born that way and couldn't help it. Engineer Chrysler gave little thought to Oelwein's farmers and automobilists but he went to the Chicago automobile show of 1905* and stood entranced in front of a beauteous white thingamajig with four doors, a bulbous horn and red leather upholstery. It was the 1905 Locomobile. The salesman said it cost $5,000 cash. Mr. Chrysler had $700 in the bank at Oelwein. He borrowed $4,300 and shipped it home...