Definition of "gadget" in Anglais

noun

1. (obsolete) A thing whose name cannot be remembered; thingamajig, doohickey.

2. Any device or machine, especially one whose name cannot be recalled, often either clever or complicated.

   • 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?

3. (informal) Any consumer electronics product.

4. (computer security) A sequence of machine code instructions crafted as part of an exploit that attempts to divert execution to a memory location chosen by the attacker.

   • A Spectre gadget was found in the Linux kernel's implementation of system interrupts.

5. (computer science) A technique for converting a part of one problem to an equivalent part of another problem, used in constructing reductions.

   • We reduce an instance of 3-SAT to an instance of bird-flock-optimization, using a gadget that converts each conjunctive Boolean clause to a group of birds.

6. (glassblowing) A spring clip attached to the end of a punty in order to grasp the foot of a glass without leaving a bullion while finishing the bowl.