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AmericanEnglish again
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30-11-2015, 04:46 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Janet
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Mar 2013
Posts: 128
AmericanEnglish again
In article ,
lid says...
On Sun, 29 Nov 2015 22:21:40 philgurr wrote:
"Gary Woods" wrote in message
.. .
Quite a while ago, I bought a neat little tool described as a "Widger."
Just a slightly curved piece of stainless steel sort of the size of a
largish pen; different widths on the 2 ends; used for pricking out
seedlings and transplanting small stuff.
The name sounds very British - is it?
Previously (and still for very small seedlings), I used a pocket sized
flatblade screwdriver.
See :-
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/de...english/widger
That reference suggests that it is a nonsense word "used in a series of
memory tests". There is no etymology connected with it other than that
so it would appear that it is a word that someone made up when he/she
didn't know what to call it, and it stuck.
The word doesn't appear in my 1950s OED.
Oxford Dictionary
Widget
A small gadget or mechanical device.
Cambridge English Dictionary;
WIDGET
any small device whose name you have forgotten or do not know
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