The Schmilblick is an imaginary object first described in a
nonsense prose by the French
humorist
A humorist (American) or humourist (British spelling) is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughs. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business e ...
Pierre Dac
André Isaac (15 August 1893 Châlons-sur-Marne, France – 9 February 1975 Paris, France), better known as Pierre Dac, was a French humorist. During World War II, Pierre Dac was one of the speakers of the BBC's ''Radio Londres'' service to occu ...
during the 1950s. According to its creator, the Schmilblick can be used in almost any occasion, therefore being strictly indispensable. Dac himself credits the fictional brothers Jules and Raphaël Fauderche with its invention ("Fauderche" means "Fake arse" in French).
The ''Schmilblick'' resurfaced in 1969, in a TV show by
Guy Lux and
Jacques Antoine
Jacques Antoine (14 March 1924 – 14 September 2012) was a French creator and producer of game shows. His most famous creations include '' Treasure Hunt'', ''Interceptor'', '' Fort Boyard'', and ''The Crystal Maze''.
Personal life
Jacques Anto ...
entitled ''Le Schmilblic'' (sometimes spelled ''Schmilblik'' or ''Schmilblick''). The aim of the game was to guess the name of an object given some of its characteristics (color, shape, use and so on). This TV game actually re-uses an idea from an old radio show called ''Tirlipot'' created several years before.
The word quickly became very popular in
French language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in Nor ...
and was sometimes used as a
placeholder name
Placeholder names are words that can refer to things or people whose names do not exist, are tip of the tongue, temporarily forgotten, are not relevant to the salient point at hand, are to avoid stigmatization, are unknowable/unpredictable in ...
, particularly for a strange or unknown object similar to English words like "thingamajig" or "whatchamacallit". Nowadays, this word is occasionally used to refer to some limited help provided by someone to solve a difficult problem.
The idiom is actually ''faire avancer le schmilblick'' ("to make the schmilblick move/get ahead", literally) and was used a lot in the TV quiz show where it meant asking another pertinent question that might make it easier to guess the object.
Coluche used this word in one of his sketches, a parody of
Guy Lux's show.
See also
*
MacGuffin
* ''
Schtroumpf''
References
External links
Pierre Dac's original sketch
French words and phrases
Fictional objects
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