gadget

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See also: Gadget

English

Etymology

Unknown. First used in print by Robert Brown in 1886 (see quote in definition section). Might come from French gâchette or gagée, or from the French family name Gaget, an industrialist who produced promotional gadgets in collaboration with the project to build the statue of Liberty.

Pronunciation

Noun

gadget (plural gadgets)

  1. (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.
  2. 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?
  3. (informal) Any consumer electronics product.
    • 1987, Kerry Cue, Hang On To Your Horses Doovers, page 5:
      From the Marvel Mixmaster to the Miracle Microwave, every time a new-fangled gadget has lobbed into the Aussie kitchen, Aussie mums have changed their cooking styles accordingly.
  4. (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.
  5. (computer science) A technique for converting a part of one problem to an equivalent part of another problem, used in constructing reductions.
    We reduce an instance of 3-SAT to an instance of bird-flock-optimization, using a gadget that converts each conjunctive Boolean clause to a group of birds.
  6. (glassblowing) A spring clip attached to the end of a punty in order to grasp the foot of a glass without leaving a bullion while finishing the bowl.

Alternative forms

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Translations

Further reading

Anagrams

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English gadget, itself of French origin.

Pronunciation

Noun

gadget m (plural gadgets)

  1. gadget

Synonyms

Further reading

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English gadget.

Pronunciation

Noun

gadget m (invariable)

  1. gadget (small device)

References

  1. ^ gadget in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

Romanian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English gadget.

Noun

gadget n (plural gadgeturi)

  1. gadget

Declension

singular plural
indefinite definite indefinite definite
nominative-accusative gadget gadgetul gadgeturi gadgeturile
genitive-dative gadget gadgetului gadgeturi gadgeturilor
vocative gadgetule gadgeturilor

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English gadget.

Pronunciation

 
  • IPA(key): (everywhere but Argentina and Uruguay) /ˈɡaʝet/
  • IPA(key): (Buenos Aires and environs) /ˈɡaʃet/
  • IPA(key): (elsewhere in Argentina and Uruguay) /ˈɡaʒet/

Noun

gadget m (plural gadgets)

  1. gadget
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