5

What does なんたらという mean? I searched なんたら's meaning and it showed. The following

  • oojah
  • oojahkapiv
  • oojamaflip
  • oojar
  • oojiboo

I used eow.alc.co.jp to search. http://eow.alc.co.jp/%E3%81%AA%E3%82%93%E3%81%9F%E3%82%89/UTF-8/ What do this mean? Is this a japanese only word?

Improve this question
2
  • Uh, yeah. I don't think that article is helping...
    – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
    Oct 31, 2011 at 10:30
  • @IgnacioVazquez-Abrams: Note that Eijiro is primarily designed for people who speak Japanese as a native language and English as a foreign language. Although this entry does not help understanding the meaning of なんたら, it is helpful if you already know the meaning of なんたら and want to know how to say it in English.
    – Tsuyoshi Ito
    Nov 1, 2011 at 19:36

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

I suspect this is a type of metasyntactic variable, a word which stands in for an unknown word. I don't know why those examples were chosen, but more common metasyntactic variables in my idiolect are 'whatchamacallit', 'doodad', 'thingummy' etc.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    I asked a friend and they happened to use the same thingamajig-type of explanation. The explanation kind of implied a forgotten word though.
    – Louis Waweru
    Oct 31, 2011 at 12:45
  • 1
    I've never heard of any idiolect that has the metasyntactic variables listed in the OP. They look completely foreign to me.
    – Karl Knechtel
    Nov 5, 2011 at 8:21
  • FWIW, JEDict's «なんたらかんたら (exp) something or other (often used in place of a word or phrase that has been forgotten)» seems to support this hypothesis.
    – MickG
    Jan 6, 2016 at 22:00

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .