oojah capivvy

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English

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Alternative forms

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ooja capivvy, ooja ka pivvy, ooja ka pivi, oojah capiff, ojah capiff, oojah ka piv, ooja ka piv, oojah kerpiv, oojah-cum-pivvy, hoojah kapippy, ujahkapiv

Etymology

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Unknown. Perhaps from Urdu ḥujjat kāfī fīhi (“argument is sufficient”);[1] compare oojah. Sornig (see quotations below) suggests derivation from Neapolitan agio capit (“I've understood”), but seems to be alone in this suggestion. Attested from the 1910s, often described as soldiers’ or sailors’ slang.[2]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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oojah capivvy

  1. (informal, dated, now rare) Something that one cannot name or does not know the name of; a whatsit.
    Synonym: oojah
    • 1931, John Van Druten, London Wall, a Comedy in Three Acts:
      Birkinshaw: I suppose you ’aven’t time to help me with the post, have you? I’d like to get off to time to-night.
      Pat: All right.
      Birkinshaw: There’s a whole lot in the Oojah Capivvy now. If you’d just take ’em and fold ’em and stick ’em in the envelopes, and bung ’em across to me, I’ll enter ’em up.
    • 1975, Zulfikar Ghose, Crump’s Terms: A Novel, page 31:
      If that’s what you want to work for, right, let’s start, get the bibles out.
      ―Ooja ka pivi! commented Barnes, and added as an afterthought: Spas!
    • [1981, Karl Sornig, Lexical Innovation: A Study of Slang, Colloquialisms, and Casual Speech, page 89:
      One might observe what usually happens to people who by chance listen to radio news in a foreign language: folk-etymological re-interpretation sets in immediately after apperception of the unfamiliar sound chain. The Sunday Times (11.2.62) had the example UJAHKAPIV (from Napolitanian AGIO CAPIT = HO CAPITO ="I've understood" which with British soldiers came to denote "anything of which the name was unknown").]
    • 2011 August 26, THE FERRET, “Another death by towball”, in Patrol 4x4‎[1]:
      It's a bit like a ujakapivi, only they copy that idea from the wigwam for a goose's bridle.lol

See also

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References

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  1. ^ “oojah capivvy, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2004.
  2. ^ John Brophy and Eric Partridge (1965) The Long Trail: What the British Soldier Sang and Said in The Great War of 1914-18, page 157: “Oojah: Or, in full, oojah-cum-pivvy. A military equivalent for ‘thingamybob’”
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