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A gadget is a mechanical device or any other inventive item. Gizmos are a term used to describe gadgets.

The word’s origins are a point of contention. The term was initially used to describe a spring pontil, a glassmaking instrument created in the 18th century. According to the Corning Museum of Glass’ glass dictionary, a gadget is a metal rod with a spring clip that holds the foot of a vase and eliminates the need for a pontil. In the late 18th century, gadgets were first utilized.

The use of “gadget” as a placeholder name for a technical item whose actual name one can’t remember dates back to the 1850s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, with Robert Brown’s 1886 book Spunyarn and Spindrift, A sailor boy’s log of a voyage out and home in a China tea-clipper containing the earliest known usage in print.

According to a widely circulated story, the word “gadget” was “invented” when Gaget, Gauthier & Cie, the company behind the repoussé construction of the Statue of Liberty (1886), created a small-scale replica of the monument and named it after their firm; however, evidence suggests that the word was already in use in nautical circles, and that it did not become popular, at least in the United States.

Other sources claim that the term comes from the French gâchette, used to different parts of a firing mechanism, or the French gagée, a tiny tool or accessory.

When it was recommended that this term be placed in the list of local verbal provincialisms at the Plymouth conference of the Devonshire Association in 1916, there was a discussion. Several members objected to it being included since it is widely used across the country; and a navy officer present stated that it has been a widespread term in the military for years for a tool or implement whose exact name is unknown or has been lost for the time being.

The term’s use in military jargon was not limited to the navy. Throughout the book, “The memoirs of a pilot in the British Royal Flying Corps, “Above the Battle,” by Vivian Drake, published in 1918 by D. Appleton & Co., of New York and London, contains the following passage: “Our ennui was occasionally relieved by new gadgets — “gadget” is the Flying Corps slang for invention! Some of the devices were impressive, while others were amusing.”

The term “gadget” had taken on the implications of compactness and mobility by the second half of the twentieth century.

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