gadget: [19] Gadget is an elusive sort of word, as vague in its history as it is unspecific in its meaning. It seems to have originated as a piece of sailors’ slang, and is said to have been current as long ago as the 1850s, but the earliest record of it in print is from 1886, in R Brown’s Spun Yarn and Spindrift: ‘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 chickenfixing, or a gadjet, or a gill-guy, or a timmeynoggy, or a wim-wom – just pro tem., you know’.
As for its source, suggestions have included French gâchette ‘catch of a mechanism’ and French dialect gagée ‘tool’.
gadget (n.)
1886, gadjet (but said by OED corespondents to date from 1850s), sailors' slang word for any small mechanical thing or part of a ship for which they lacked, or forgot, a name; perhaps from French gâchette "catch-piece of a mechanism" (15c.), diminutive of gâche "staple of a lock." OED says derivation from gauge is "improbable."
双语例句
1. The gadget can be attached to any vertical surface.
这小玩意儿可以粘在任何垂直表面上。
来自柯林斯例句
2. The gadget can be attached to any vertical or near vertical surface.
该装置可以装在任何垂直或近似垂直的平面上。
来自柯林斯例句
3. The children were squabbling over the remote-control gadget for the television.
孩子们正在为抢夺电视机的遥控器而争吵。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The gadget is used to artificially inseminate cows.