Re: CHAT: thingummy (was Re: concepts of Babel text)

At 5/5/01 04:07 PM -0400, you wrote:
>Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Hehe. I heard myself say "Och då sa vad heter han till vad heter hon ...",
> > which for the benefit of you English speaking people translates as "And
> then
> > what is his name said to what is her name ...". I'm very comprehensible,
> > sometimes.
>
>What's-his-name is also used in English.  I'd also write
>"what's-his-face" instead of "wotsisface", especially since "wot"
>suggests /wAt/ to me, not /w@t/|
There is also the version: "what's-his-butt".

A small group of people I know (20 or so) use the phrase
"what's-his-bucket" for the same thing. One of our friends who has only
been speaking English for about 5 years said that instead of
"what's-his-butt", and the term has caught on as a joke among us.



Marcus Smith

Unfortunately, or luckily,
no language is tyrannically consistent.
All grammars leak.
                -- Edward Sapir