gadget
Americannoun
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gadgets
plural
noun
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a small mechanical device or appliance
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any object that is interesting for its ingenuity or novelty rather than for its practical use
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of gadget
1850–55; origin uncertain; compare French gâchette the catch of a lock, sear of a gunlock
Explanation
A gadget is a tool or device, especially one that works remarkably well for a specific task. Your dad's favorite kitchen gadget might be his special knife that cuts vegetables into spirals. The remote control your sister rigs up to the Christmas tree is a gadget, and your camping tool that folds out into various knives, corkscrews, and scissors is another kind of gadget. The original spelling was gadjet, and it's thought to have originated in the 1850's as sailors' slang, meaning any mechanism or ship part that either lacked a name or whose name had been forgotten. It may be rooted in the French gâchette, "piece of a mechanism."
Vocabulary lists containing gadget
"Diary of a Wimpy Kid" by Jeff Kinney
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The Ingenious Lexicon of Invention
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The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Anthropic’s researchers said their estimate of how fast and how far AI-fueled malware could spread was rough, since it was based on one type of gadget and one past botnet.
From Barron's ● Oct. 13, 2026
And it’s been working on a gadget with its AI agent that fits on a keychain that’s still in development but the company plans to ship in December.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026
So she and her husband bought a gadget that has become ubiquitous for parents across China’s cities: a smartwatch for children.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 21, 2026
A gadget only a dentist could love — a $499 toothbrush with AI and a camera.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 1, 2026
“It wasn’t the easiest gadget to work with,” Hall said later.
From "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin
Beijing’s $37 billion subsidy program is steering consumers toward smart gadgets and green technology.
From Barron's ● Oct. 17, 2026
While debates about building AI that surpasses human intelligence, flashy new gadgets and AI spending tend to dominate tech events, tech talks at last week’s Oakland Tech Week often had a different vibe.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
But for the manufacturers of those devices, that may not matter as gadgets go premium.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
Arm designs the brains or CPUs of microchips already used in hundreds of billions of phones, cars, smartwatches and gadgets across the globe.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
There are always better Net access, newer software, a continuous stream of updates, a more powerful hard drive, a by now incalculable inventory of gadgets and gizmos, programs, graphics, and operating systems.
From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
