gadget

Definition

A thing whose name cannot be remembered; thingamajig, doohickey.

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.

Example Sentences

• "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."
• "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?"