Pompatus (or Pompitus) (/ˈpɒmpətəs/) is a nonce word coined by Steve Miller in his hit single "The Joker" (1973).
Green included the word "puppetutes" in the lyrics of doo-wop song "The Letter" (1954), as performed by him and The Medallions.
[1] The lyrics of "The Joker" include the quatrain: Each line references a track on a previous Miller album: "Space Cowboy" on Brave New World (1969); "Gangster of Love" on Sailor (1968); and "Enter Maurice" on Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden (1972), which includes the lines:[1] Although Miller claims he invented the words "epismetology" (a metathesis of the word epistemology) and "pompatus", both are variants of words which Miller most likely heard in a song by Vernon Green called "The Letter," which was recorded by the Los Angeles doo-wop group The Medallions in 1954.
The Pompatus of Love, a 1996 film starring Jon Cryer, featured four men discussing a number of assorted themes, including attempts to determine the meaning of the phrase.
[3] Jon Cryer was also a writer of the film, and describes finding out the meaning of the phrase during a phone call with Vernon Green in his autobiography "So That Happened" in chapter 22, page 217.