gadget

• gadjet

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”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡædʒɪt/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ædʒɪt

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. (slang) Any consumer electronics product.
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.

• contraption
• contrivance
• doohickey
• gizmo
• widget

• gadgety

• dagget, tagged

Borrowed from English gadget.

• IPA^(key): /ɡa.dʒɛ/

gadget m (plural gadgets)

1. gadget

Borrowed from English gadget.

gadget m (invariable)

1. gadget (small device)

Borrowed from English gadget.

gadget m (plural gadgets)

1. gadget