Q My friends and I recently got into a discussion about the words “doodad” and “doohickey.” Can you tell us where they are from? – M.C., Trumbull, Conn.

A: “Doodad” has appeared in written English for about 120 years now and “doohickey” for about 100. We say “written English” because the early citations we have on file make it clear that the words were in spoken use well before they made it into print. Consequently, we have almost no information on the origins of either word.

There is a whole host of words that are to describe those small articles, instruments, utensils and other things whose names have been temporarily forgotten. The origins of these words have also been forgotten. While we enter “doodad” and “doohickey,” the two most common “doo” words, in our dictionary, other sources note the existence of “doodah,” “doojigger” and the fanciful “doowhanger,” among others. The origins of all of these words are unknown, though some may have used “doodad” as a building block.

There is also the “thing” class of such words: “thingy,” “thingummy,” “thingamajig” and “thingamabob.” We have slightly more information on these. They are generally older than the “doo” words, dating in some cases back to the 1600s, and almost all of these trace back to the word “thingum,” an irregular coinage based on “thing.” The only exception is “thingy,” the latest of the bunch, which traces directly back to “thing.”

Q A fatal car accident was recently described in our newspaper as a “tragic mishap.” Isn’t a mishap something minor? It seems to me that the newspaper was trivializing this tragedy. – R.B., Mineola, N.Y.

A: You’re not alone in your belief that the word “mishap” should apply only to minor accidents. Usage specialists have been saying as much for the past 50 or so years. Historically, however, the word has applied to any unfortunate accident. In Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors,” for example, the old Syracusan merchant Aegeon tells “sad stories of (his) own mishaps,” which include a shipwreck in which his wife and one of his twin sons were lost. Although Aegeon knows that they were rescued and not drowned, the accident is nonetheless not a trivial one.

Another reason “mishap” applies to unfortunate accidents of any kind has to do with the practical considerations of the newspaper business. If the fatal car accident to which you refer was described as a mishap in your newspaper’s headline, it may have had to do with the fact that, at six letters, “mishap” is two letters shorter than “accident” – no small thing when it comes to newspaper layout. But “mishap” is used this way in the ordinary prose of newspapers too. Our files show examples of “mishap” referring to serious accidents from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, among many others.

This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition. Readers may send questions to Merriam-Webster’s Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102.