Does 一样东西 mean "thingummy"

[Shelley]

I came across this sentence:

 

我曾经买过那些目录里的一样东西

 

The translation as written in the text is:

 

I once bought a thingummy out of one of those catalogues.

 

I have worked out what the "I once bought" and "out of one of those catalogues" is.

 

So does 一样东西 mean "thingummy" ? It literally means: "same things"

 

If it does are there other translations in Chinese for similar words in English such as "whatchma callit" "whogimaflip" "dohickey" and other made up words for things that you don't know the real name of.

 

Until I came across this sentence it never occurred to me that there might be similar words in Chinese.

 

 

 

 

[eddyf]

Maybe in this sentence it does but I think a lot of the time 一样东西 means "one thing" as in for example, "There's only one thing standing in my way." It doesn't mean "same things". Yes 一样 can mean "the same" but in this situation 样 is acting as a measure word for 东西 and 一 is just a number.

There's this word 玩意儿 that can be used to refer to something you don't know the name of (or don't care about the name of). I've also seen people say things like "叫什么", "那个叫什么", "这个叫什么", etc. for "whatchamacallit" which is pretty easy to understand.

[Shelley]

I hadn't thought of that. 样 as a measure word. Interesting, so it means "one type of thing"  That make more sense as a translation of thingummy.

 

The words you suggest also make sense because they basically means "called what" or "that called what" etc.

[imron]

Yes, here 样 is being used as a measure word for 东西.

[roddy]

I don't like the translation very much. I'd just use 'something'. There's no indication (in the bit we've seen, anyway) that the speaker wants to name the object but can't remember what it's called.

[Shelley]

This is the complete text. It was being used to demonstrate the use of 曾经。

 

Its not very important as it is a silly word I wouldn't use, but I was curious as to the translation of such a non word.

 

It also made me think about the way language manages to translate the weirdest things

[lips]

那什么来着

一个什么来着