English[edit] Alternative forms[edit] Etymology[edit] Unknown. First used in print by Robert Brown in 1886 (see quote in definition section). Might come from French gâchette or gagée. Compare Finnish koje (“instrument, device”). Pronunciation[edit] Noun[edit] gadget (plural gadgets) (obsolete) A thing whose name cannot be remembered; thingamajig, doohickey. 1886, Robert Brown, Spunyard […]
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English[edit]
Alternative forms[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Unknown. First used in print by Robert Brown in 1886 (see quote in definition section). Might come from Frenchgâchette or gagée. Compare Finnishkoje(“instrument, device”).
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
gadget (pluralgadgets)
(obsolete) A thing whose name cannot be remembered; thingamajig, doohickey.
1886, Robert Brown, Spunyard and Spindrift, A Sailor Boy’s Log of a Voyage Out and Home in a China Tea-clipper:
Then the names of all the other things on board a ship! I don’t know half of them yet; even the sailors forget at times, and if the exact name of anything they want happens to slip from their memory, they call it a chicken-fixing, or a gadjet, or a timmey-noggy, or a wim-wom—just pro tem., you know.
Any device or machine, especially one whose name cannot be recalled. Often either clever or complicated.
He bought a neat new gadget for shredding potatoes.
That’s quite a lot of gadgets you have collected. Do you use any of them?
(slang) Any consumer electronics product.
(computing) A sequence of machine code instructions crafted as part of an exploit that attempts to divert execution to a memory location chosen by the attacker.
usage note for Internet The lowercase form internet is regularly used in technology-related publications and in most informal writing such as social media posts, email, and text messages. And lowercase is increasingly being used in formal, edited writing such as newspapers. The related term intranet (a private, usually restricted network) […]
