What Is A Gizmo?

The Nokia Morph Concept

We often use the words Gizmo and Gadget here at Gizmos for Geeks (as the name suggests), but what do they mean? The first thing is that “Gizmo” and “Gadget” pretty much mean the same thing, so this post could easily be titled ‘What Is A Gadget?

Princeton defines gizmos as ‘devices or controls that are very useful for a particular job’. A good starting point, although Answers.com defines a gizmo as something ‘whose name is forgotten or unknown’ or a ‘novelty item used as a gimmick’. These definitions echo around the internet on various dictionary sites.

So a gizmo/gadget can be one of 2 things: something that is really helpful and useful to get a job done, or something that is completely useless and is just made for the novelty factor.

But, we like to think a gadget is anything that’s technologically cool, like most of the stuff we feature here on Gizmos for Geeks!