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A word that substitutes for the forgotten or ignored proper name of any given object. A word that signifies miscellany; sundry objects.

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Year: 1886

Quote: “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 gill-guy, or a timmey-noggy, or a wim-womjust pro tem., you know.”

Author: Brown, Robert

Source: London: Houlston and Sons, xxi. 378.

Year: 1903

Quote: “Thus we’ave the starboard side completely blocked an’ the general traffic tricklin’ over’ead along the fore-an’-aft bridge. Then Chips gets into her an’ begins balin’ out a mess o’ small reckonin’s on the deck. Simultaneous there come up three o’ those dirty engine-room objects which we call ‘tiffies,’ an’ a stoker or two with orders to repair her steamin’ gadgets. They get into her an’ bale out another young Christmas-treeful of small reckonin’s–brass mostly.”

Author: Kipling, Rudyard

Source: orig. 1903, first published in book form with Traffics and Discoveries, 1904

Year: 1903

Quote: “Two Six Seven’s steam-gadgets was paralytic. Our Mr. Moorshed done his painstakin’ best–it’s his first command of a war-canoe, matoor age nineteen…”

Author: Kipling, Rudyard

Source: orig. 1903, then Traffics and Discoveries, 1904

Year: 1904

Quote: “Why, I’m blest, if it ain’t old Bobby first this time,’ ejaculated the Flag-Captain, ‘that’s her boat, with the curly gadget on the bows, right enough. ‘Strordinary!”

Author: Parker, G.R.

Source: p. ix.

Year: 1906

Quote: “Gadget’–a make-shift name for any object.”

Author: Beyer, Thomas

Source: Washington D.C.: Army and Navy Register. 1906

Year: 1910

Quote: “In the cell-like silence of the white cylinder, he cast his eyes upon each bright gadget crowded about him–the telescope sights, air-blast, hoist-controller–as if trying to fix the look of each irrevocably on his mind. Then he shut his eyes as he crawled to the deck under the turret.”

Author: Dunn, Robert

Source: Everybody’s Magazine. v22n1. January 1910. p. 112

Year: 1913

Quote: ““My name is–er–Gadget,” exclaimed the nervous stranger, and trod short-sightedly upon O Miya San.”

Author:

Source: The English Review, Duckworth & Co., vol. 14

Year: 1918

Quote: “You know, in the marines, when we can’t think of a generic name for anything, we call it a ‘gadget’ or a ‘gilguy.’ Now, this man has won two Congressional Medals and has another coming. When we sighted the French coast, I was standing, where he could n’t see me, just behind him; and I heard him say: ‘I got two o’ them gadgets now, an’ one on its way. I wonder if I’ll get another over here.”

Author: Kauffman, Reginald Wright

Source: The Living Age. no. 3861. July 6, 1918, p.47

Year: 1918

Quote: “But what I should like to know is, what the deuce is a doo-hickie?’ ‘A doo-hickie?’ replied the squadron commander. ‘A doo-hickie? H’m’m. George, how would you describe a doo-hickie?’ The officer appealed to puffed his pipe in silence for a moment [sic]. ‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘you know more or less what a gadget’s like?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And a gilguy?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, a doo-hickie is something like that, only smaller as a rule.’ […] The Stranger within the Gates of the Navy-that-Flies had the drink, and from then onwards forebore to ask any more questions. But he still sometimes wonders what the functions of a doo-hickie might be.”

Author: Bartimeus

Source: New York: George H. Doran Company. 1918 p. 100

Year: 1918

Quote: “A discussion arose at the Plymouth meeting of the Devonshire Association in 1916 when it was suggested that this word should be recorded in the list of local verbal provincialisms. Several members dissented from its inclusion on the ground that it is in common use throughout the country and a naval officer who was present said that it has for years been a popular expression in the service for a tool or implement, the exact name of which is unknown or has for the moment been forgotten. I have also frequently heard it applied by motor-cycle friends to the collection of fitments to be seen on motor cycles. ‘His handle-bars are smothered in gadgets’ refers to such things as speedometers, mirrors, levers, badges, mascots, &c., attached to the steering handles”. / ‘Gadget’ is a colloquialism in the Navy for any small fitment or uncommon article–for example, ‘a curious gadget.’ I never came across anybody who could give a derivation.” -A.G. Kealy / “In a list of words and phrases used by our soldiers at the Front, sent to me recently from Flanders, there is the word ‘gadget,’ and its meaning is given as billets or quarters of any description, ‘and sometimes it is used to denote a thing of which the name is not known.’” –Archibald Sparke. / ‘Webster’s New International Dictionary’ says that ‘gadget’ is often used of something novel, or not known by its proper name (slang).’ It is a word in frequent use in this sense by seamen and other workers.” –F.A. Russell”

Author: Tapley-Soper

Source:

Year: 1919

Quote: “One of the city departments require, let us say, five gross of woven wire gadgets–gadgets in this case meaning anything you may be pleased to imagine. Upon request of this request, the Division of Purchases sends a copy of the requisition to each gadget house in the city, as shown by the division’s mailing lists, and requests quotations.”

Author:

Source: The Toledo City Journal. v4n5, Feb. 1 1919

Year: 1921

Quote: “We will suppose that a factory is of just medium size and that it is governed by a General Manager and a Superintendent. Also, that it has a Statistical Department and the usual number of factory departments with a foreman in charge of each. The product is a small machine, which we will call a gadget, and it is composed of a few castings, which are purchased from an outside foundry, some commerical parts, and some parts which are made in the various departments. The factory has been turning out about thirty machines a day, but, it is desired to increase this output to forty.”

Author:

Source: Engineering and Contracting. Novemer 23, 1921

Year: 1922

Quote: “Casey awoke under the vivid impression that some one was driving a gadget into his skull with a ‘double-jack.’”

Author: Bower, B.M.

Source: p. 101

Year: 1922

Quote: “Now, of course there’s no reason why a Russian should not use a German sub if he could get hold of it, but what were they doing over here in the East River is what gets me. I don’t believe they were just rum-runners, even if Murphy and his crowd did find a lot of booze over there, and what was that cigar-shaped sub-sea gadget they were pulling along with ‘em?’ ‘Why, I think that’s all simple,’ declared Tom. ‘They probably brought liquor in here with the submarine and carried it to the garage in that torpedolike thing.’”

Author: Verrill, A. Hyatt

Source: D. Appleton and Company: 1922

Year: 1923

Quote: “dinkus, n. Thing. Also Doodinkus, Doodad, Dinglebob, Jigger, Thingumbob, Gadget.”

Author: Taylor, J.L.B.

Source: Dialect Notes: Publications of the American Dialect Society. vol. 5 part 6. 1923

Year: 1924

Quote: “Gadgets (cxlvii. 427).–In J. Manchon’s ‘Le Slang’ (Paris, 1923) I find: Gadget, s. lo N[autique] toute pièce de machine; 2º F[amilier] employé à la place d’un mot qu’on ne trouve pas: chose, machin, truc; M[ilitaire] une chose quelconque [an unspecified thing], le système, l’affaire (à faire, à avoir, à réussir): the gadget is to barge in on the Chief fright away, at the double. La chose à faire c’est de rentrer tout de suite dans le patron et au pas d’gym [d’oum?]. See also 12 S. iv. 187, 281. –John B. Wainewright. / Professor Ernest Weekley, in ‘A Concise Etymological Dictionary of Modern English,’ deals with this word thus: ‘Gadget [neol.]..? From gadge, early Scottish form of gauge. –H. ASkew. / Spennymoor. I am told that this word has a naval origin and was, and is, used to signify any piece of loose tackle.””

Author:

Source: Notes and Queries, 1925; CXLVIII: 15

Year: 1927

Quote: “A College Professor Solves a Mathematical Problem and Becomes a Wealthy Inventor. Most of us are likely to think of an inventor as eagerly seeking some idea upon which to exercise his genius, and then bending over a work bench surrounded with wheels, wires and miscellaneous gadgets trying first this combination and then that until he works out his invention. / He gets his patent and makes the rounds of manu­facturers, all save one of whom laugh at his radical ideas, but that one sees something in it and makes a fortune. / The other day we were talking with an inventor who is not like that at all. He never thought of himself as an inventor, never looked for anything to invent, never had any intention of making a lot of money, believes he is weak in imagination-that quality so often considered necessary to success­ful invention-has put in far more time writing a book than he has done in inventing, has done his in­ venting only as a sort of side line and never bothered ped­dling an invention around among manufacturers. All the inventing he does is with a pen and a note book. And yet Louis Alan Hazeltine has made a fortune out of his inventions. The best known of them, of course, is the Neu­trodyne radio receiver.”

Author: Wright, Milton

Source: Scientific American 137, (October 1927). p. 328-329

Year: 1927

Quote: “After the long and toilsome rise, American civilization had reached, at the summer solstice of Normalcy, the high plateau of permanent peace and prosperity. […] Notes of jubilee drowned the plaintive cries of farmers and the queasy doubts of querulous critics. According to the golden appearance of things, intensity would create novelty upon novelty, gadget upon gadget, to keep the nation’s machine whirling; inevitably outlets would be found for the accumulations of capital and the torrents of commodities; and employment would be afforded for laborers befitting their merits and diligence. Articles for comfort and convenience, devices for diversion and amusement were multiplying with sensational rapidity, giving promise of a satisfaction even more gratifying. Corporations were swelling in size, holding companies were rising to dizzy heights, the tide of liquid claims to wealth were flooding in.”

Author: Beard, Charles Austin and Marry Ritter Beard

Source: New York: Macmillan Company. 1927. p. 3-4

Year: 1928

Quote: “Where did you put that gadget, thingamabob or whatsit that you saved for just such an occasion as this? Closets will have to be searched, the basement looked into, ad you may even desperately ransack the attic. Use a good flashlight.”

Author:

Source: Popular Science, October 1928

Year: 1929

Quote: “With the holiday season three weeks past Mr. Edgell had about gone through his presents; all that remained was an odd-looking gadget of nickel, which bore the cryptic stamp, ‘Griffo-W128. Pat. 1927.’ Mr. Edgell didn’t know what it was meant for. He had been bafled by it ever since Christmas morning, when it had arrived from the Dillards, along with some handkerchiefs of a sort of bleached burlap, and a tie.” Don’t you know what it is? “It’s a–a–puzzle.’ There was a long pause, and finally Mr. Edgell elaned forward in his chair. ‘Yes, Alberta,’ he said, sweetly, ‘and it’s a damn good one.”

Author: Reed, Johnston

Source: The New Yorker. January 19, 1929. p. 59-60

Year: 1931

Quote: “Slynes, Elkweather & Uffley Gadgets. It is attractively filled with gadgets (as well as widjums and whassats) in all colors. Perhaps it is as well to mention that these are irregularly shaped objects varying in size from that of a marble to that of a small boulder. Price tags are conspicuously attached to them as they await purchasers in the window. They are much sought after for gifts by persons who wish to be considered original.” (3) On Mr. Uffley’s disease: “What are leu- leucocytes?” “Leucocytes? A kind of gadget. Nothing but gadgets!” George Uffley takes pride in being able to draw gadgets, which his young son is working up to. gadgets numbered “Number C 75, Number S 8080, Number M 44.”

Author: Wilde, Perciva

Source: Ten Plays for Little Theatres. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1931

Year: 1932

Quote: “Papa goes completely to ruin and son wanders around a bit. Then he invents a new gadget, restores the family fortune, and all is well.”

Author:

Source: Variety, April 5, 1932

Year: 1933

Quote: “The equipment consists of a mail-order-house bench grinder and quarter horsepower motor, two Carborundum wheels and some Carborundum grains, two felt wheels and powdered pumice, a few small gadgets, a strong thumb and patience. The material is low­ priced mineral in the rough–moss agates, rose quartz, carnelian, jasper, chalcedony, tiger eye and so on–obtainable from mineral dealers, or often is most unpromising stones simply picked up while on country rocks.”

Author: Ingalls, Albert G.

Source: Scientific American 148, (February 1933) p. 89-89

Year: 1939

Quote: “Here again France is facing a situation which is common to all highly industrialized countries. The so-called bottlenecks of industrial production are looming large in Germany, England, even the United States, and professional economists everywhere are coming to insist that you may have large unemployment along with a serious shortage of skilled labor? indeed, paradoxically enough, the labor shortage may to a considerable extent be responsible for unemployment. The failure of one highly specialized factory manufacturing a particular gadget may hold up a great deal of industrial production which depends directly or indirectly upon that particular gadget. All that the November decrees did was to charge the Axe Committee with studying these bottlenecks and devising plans for a more effective distribution of labor.”

Author: Friedrich, Carl Joachim

Source: The Atlantic Monthly: Oct 1939: p. 491

Year: 1945

Quote: “That is why the would-be mystic is always told to refrain from busying himself with matters which do not refer to his ultimate goal, or in relation to which he cannot effectively do immediate and concrete good. This self-denying ordinance covers most of the things with which, outside business hours, the ordinary person is mainly preoccupied–news, the day’s installment of the various radio epics, this year’s car models and gadgets, the latest fashions. But it is upon fashions, cars and gadgets, upon news and the advertising for which news exists, that our present industrial and economic system depends for its proper functioning. For, as ex-President Hoover pointed out not long ago, this system cannot work unless the demand for non-necessaries is not merely kept up, but continually expanded.”

Author: Huxley, Aldous

Source: Vedanta for the Western World. ed. Christopher Isherwood. Vedanta Press: 1945. p. 129

Year: 1952

Quote: “The Gadget Maker is a 1955 novel by Maxwell Griffith. It is notable for its vivid depiction of an otherwise-rarely-described milieu: campus life at MIT in the 1940s. It also presents a striking engineers-eye-view of guided missile development at a West Coast aerospace firm during the early days of the cold war. On its appearance, the New York Times described The Gadget Maker as “the story of a misguided zealot devoted body and soul to the advancement of knowledge” and called it “an absorbing narrative [and] a clear presentation of technological subject-matter, written with stylistic ease and fluidity by an author who is himself a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” Just a few phrases in the novel, such as “Essentially, engineering was the skilled bending and shaping of metals into airplanes, bridges, cars, gadgets galore. Still, it required more than a skill at fabrication–an understanding, some vital spark of creativeness.”

Author: Griffith, Maxwell

Source: The Gadget Maker. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 1954. p. 124-5

Year: 1953

Quote: “Recent news reports tell us that labor unions will begin soon to press for a 30-hour week and more than likely they will win it. But not necessarily because of the aggressiveness of the unions, but rather becaue man’s skill and inventive genius have produced machines and gadgets that have multiplied many times the productive power of man. … For, if the modern worker, using these modern tools, spent twelve hours a day at his job, we would be faced with the problem of over-production, a situation in which there would be surplus goods, and ruinous inflation.”

Author: Adams, Olive A.

Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 06-19-1953 • Page 4

Year: 1954

Quote: “Like the theory of games, it is a method of pure mathematics that can be applied to human affairs. It is used to calculate the best possible solution to a problem that involves a number of variables. […] To illustrate the method let us take a highly simplified hypothetical case. We have a factory that can make two products, which for simplicity’s sake we shall name ‘widgets’ and ‘gadgets.’”

Author: Cooper, William W., and Charnes, Abraham

Source: Scientific American 191, (August 1954). p. 21-23

Year: 1954

Quote: “New homes and houses not only mean employment for building workers and the sale of materials for construction, but they mean more electric power, more stoves, refrigerators, furniture, and hundreds of other gadgets that go to make a house a home.”

Author:

Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 02-05-1954 • Page 1

Year: 1954

Quote: “Displays of live food, fish enemies, as well as dealer displays of all kinds of acquarium gadgets will be shown.”

Author:

Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 10-08-1954 • Page [8]

Year: 1955

Quote: “Whether assuming the shape of a comical mobile or a sturdy book rack, wire–with its pliability and lack of bulk–is taking top honors as the basic material for modern gadgets and household accessories.”

Author:

Source: Sep 1, 1955.

Year: 1955

Quote: “Consider his hobbies. Is his camera his most precious possession? Or his car? Is he happiest at “do-it-yourself” projects? Or is pipe-smoking his greatest joy? The latest gadgets that help him enjoy his pastime more will be received with greatest pleasure.”

Author: Byington, Spring

Source: The Plain Dealer (Kansas City, Kansas) • 12-23-1955 • Page [5]

Year: 1957

Quote: “Every time you go in there’s some gadget you never heard of . . . and can’t live without after you see it—housewares and giftwares, guns and fishing gear, toys and games, lawn and garden goods, lamps and leisure time trinkets.”

Author:

Source: Arkansas State Press (Little Rock, Arkansas) • 07-26-1957 • Page 7

Year: 1962

Quote: “Opening night seats for all the plays I work on. The press agent offers them to his boss, the boss offers them to the president of the American Gadget Corporation, and the president of the American Gadget Corporation gives them to somebody else. Very seldom you can parlay a favour as much as that. Everybody’s happy, and I get box seats for the ball games. Wuddia say, Frank?”

Author: O’Hara, John Henry

Source: [play script]

Year: 1965

Quote: “The Khazars bust out in the east and knockthe Lombards into Italy. The Franks move into Frankland. f Martel needs money, confiscates church lands to maintain a cavalry, and so his grandson drives in and knocks the Lombards for a loop in Italy and gets crowned by the Pope right over there, “ thumb back at St. Peter’s. “ The big sweep. Hundreds of years. Where does that leave one man or ten? And it’s only a paragraph. A tribe agitated by bad crops here, a gadget there. Who can tell what’ll count? Louis the Fourteenth wins an argument about the windows at Versailles, so the builder loses his general’s job, and the French lose in Holland so you get a Dutch king of England.”

Author: Stern, Richard G.

Source:

Year: 1967

Quote: “Presenting an issue on materials in two aspects: (1) the fundamental nature of metals, ceramics, glasses, polymers and composite materials and (2) the properties that all materials possess in varying degrees. […] The tools, guns, gadgets and cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the instruments for the rise of modern science, the machines and structures of the 19th-century engineers––all were made of materials that had been known centuries before the rise of Greece.”

Author: Smith, Cyril Stanley

Source: Scientific American 217, (September 1967). p. 68-79

Year: 1967

Quote: “We used to just run to get into bed and read their reviews out loud to each other. We sent for various catalogues. We ordered LP’s together, and books, and we ordered all kinds of fascinating gadgets from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue, and outdoor clothes and fishing equipment from Abercrombie &; Fitch. What sport it was when the102stuff arrived!”

Author: Kazan, Elia

Source:

Year: 1968

Quote: “Each brand has a number of models and sizes with every kind of gadget imaginable, and there is a good deal of variation from brand to brand. “

Author:

Source: Milwaukee Star (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) • 07-10-1968 • Page 6

Year: 1968

Quote: “Small tools, gadgets, and appliances may be protected from rust and mildew by first wiping with oiled cloth and then storing in air-tight plastic bags.”

Author: Moore, Martha

Source: Milwaukee Star (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) • 11-23-1968 • Page 21

Year: 1969

Quote: “The latest executive nightmare, already spread to epidemic proportions, goes something like this: Widget &; Gadget Corp., dutifully complying with new Securities and Exchange Commission rules, breaks down its consolidated profit and reveals for the first time how much came from widgets and how much from gadgets, its two lines of business. It turns out that widgets are piling up profits like crazy, but gadgets are pretty sick.”

Author: Prestbo, John A.

Source: Wall Street Journal: 19691105

Year: 1970

Quote: “of those she had in Brooklyn. She picked up a round tin box and shook it to hear the rattle of the cooky cutters inside, then recalled suddenly the face of a summer friend of theirs, a painter who had visited them frequently in August. She recalled how he had picked up each gadget on this counter and held it close to his face, tracing its shape with his fingers and how, when he arrived, he washed his hands in the kitchen sink, using the yellow kitchen soap. She had liked him very much, liked his substantial, handsome face, the way the […]”

Author: Fox, Paula

Source: New York: Norton, 1970.

Year: 1970

Quote: “Act 1, Scene 7 SCENE 7 The Air Force Laboratory at Fort George. Test tubes, vials, bunsen burners, a general clutter of chemical and electronic gadgets. In the middle of all this is DOCTOR VECTOR, sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a white chemist’s smock. He is very tiny and his entire body is twisted and bent. He wears extra thick dark glasses and elevator shoes and speaks with a weird shifting accent. When he wants to move his wheelchair he presses a button on one of the arms and the chair propels itself electronically.”

Author: Shepard, Sam

Source: Script. 1970

Year: 1972

Quote: “If exports continue at their present rate, there will not be nearly enough money to pay the debt after Argentines get through importing raw materials for industry and foreignmade gadgets and luxury goods. To avoid political trouble, the- military government has been trying to keep wages ahead of prices by printing money and pumping it into the economy.”

Author: Novitski, Joseph

Source: New York Times. 19 August 1972

Year: 1976

Quote: “” I don’t accept the call. “ “ That voice sounded familiar, “ Simjian said. “ Was that who I think it was? “ “ Yes. “ “ Because if it was, he’s famous for his personal sleaziness. “ “ He’s completely self-taught. “ “ Not to mention the tasteless events he likes to host, “ she said. “ Degenerate ceremonies featuring objects and gadgets that mock our bodies. “ | “ Speaking of ceremonies, “ Maidengut said, “ I have some depressing news for almost everyone here. A torch-lighting ceremony is scheduled for the Great Hall. Tomorrow at dusk. All thirty-two of the resident Nobel laureates are supposed to be in attendance. “ “ What’s depressing about that? “ Simjian said. “ Nobel laureates only. Nobody else allowed. Pretty inconsiderate if you ask me. They might have included some of the rest of us. “”

Author: DeLillo, Don

Source:

Year: 1985

Quote: “I’m completely a picture person when it comes to catalogue browsing. I prefer the rainbow of brightly colored clothes, the gleam of complicated gadgets, the grimace of rugged athletes out there at the edge of their endurance. // Of course, the Banana Republic catalogue is visually appealing, too, in its way, full of drawings and watercolors so stylish that one has to wonder if the real things live up to their images.”

Author: Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher

Source: New York Times: 19850228: Section C; Page 20, Column 4; Cultural Desk

Year: 1989

Quote: “I get a lot of junk mail. Like most of my friends, I throw most of the letters away unopened. I do save the catalogues, however; I pass them to my wife, who no doubt is one of the mainstays of the $21 billion junk-mail. industry? “ direct mail, “ as its practitioners prefer. My wife brings catalogues to bed with her at night. She is also a doctor, and people with causes to advance and gadgets to sell like doctors. For every piece of mail I get, she gets ten.”

Author: Larson, Erik

Source: Harpers: 1989-07 p. 64-69