“Oojakapiv”: what does this word mean?

Question

A lot of people in my family use this word, not regularly, but enough for me to ask what it means.

I know it’s not a “real word”, but how come people from different sides of my family use it? It must mean something.

The way the word is used is for a word that doesn’t mean anything, like gobbeldygook.

Answer 1

Something like: dingbat, thingamabob or thingy .

From

1925 E. FRASER & J. GIBBONS Soldier & Sailor Words 215 Oojah (also Ooja-ka-pivi), a substitute expression for anything the name of which a speaker cannot momentarily think of, e.g. ‘Pass me that h-m, h-m, oojah-ka-pivi, will you?’ 1931 J. VAN DRUTEN London Wall II. ii. 73 There's a whole lot in the Oojah Capivvy now. 1962 Sunday Times 4 Feb. 31/6 This was the catch-phrase in a music-hall song in use during the first world war... I remember the line and the tune: ‘You cannot eat it, or see it, or hear it, you just ask for Ujah-ka-piv.’ 1966 ‘L. LANE’ ABZ of Scouse 78 Whur's ther ojah-capiff?, where is the hammer, spanner or whatever it might be? 1992 Hobart Mercury 8 Aug., There are several of Ms Bosanky's turns of phrase that are pure Downunder. For instance, ‘hoojah-kapippy’..or a ‘whatsitsname’ euphemism.

Answer 2

World Wide Words discusses this briefly: they suggest that ooja, oojah capivvy and variants originated in British Army argot around the time of WWI:

‘Pass the oojah.’ says the one-armed man who is playing billiards. What is the oojah? The oojah is any object in Heaven or earth; it is the thing which has no name or the name of which you have temporarily forgotten. — Washington Post, Oct 1917

[Edit: the OED confirms this quotation as their oldest citation for the usage, and suggests an etymology: “Perhaps [from] Urdu and Indo-Persian †ḥujjat kāfī fīhi, lit. ‘the argument is sufficient’, there’s no more to be said about it.”]

A form more familiar to some readers (it certainly was to me) may be oojah-cum-spiff, which is used rather differently: it’s an adjective meaning roughly “all right”, “in good order”, similar to e.g. tickety-boo. This turns up several times in P.G. Wodehouse’s books (the Jeeves novels, and iirc the Blandings ones too):

“Yes, I think we may say everything’s more or less oojah-cum-spiff. With one exception, Jeeves…”

[Edit: OED suggests that the spelling of this version is influenced by the then-popular use of the Latin pronoun cum.]