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Widget. It has a nice, friendly sound to it.
Widget（装饰物、小插件）。这个单词的发音听起来很好听。
It sounds a bit like it should be a small animal or bird. But it isn't. What is it then?
听起来有点像一只小动物或小鸟发出的声音。但是实际上并不是。那么到底是什么呢？
A widget can be many things, but most recently the word has come to describe small applications which run on your computer.
widget可以是很多东西，但是最近一段时间，这个单词已经开始用来指在你的电脑上运行的小应用程序了。
You might have been given the option to download a widget and wondered what it meant.
你可能已经见到过下载一个插件的选项了，并且想知道它的含义。
Widgets can have all sorts of functions – you can download a weather widget,
小插件有各种各样的功能--你可以下载一个天气插件，
so you can predict the weather (never an exact science in the UK!) or a calendar widget, or a twitter widget.
这样你就能提前知道天气状况了（在英国这从来不准）；或者是一个日历插件，也可以是一个推特插件。
I first remember hearing the word in the early 1990s from a series of beer adverts.
记得我第一次听到这个单词是在20世纪90年代早期的一系列啤酒广告中。
The great thing about the beer's new can was that it had a widget inside it.
这种啤酒的新易拉罐最棒的一点在于，它的里面有一个小装置。
This meant that when you opened the can, the beer came out like a draught beer, the beer you get on tap in a pub.
当你打开易拉罐的时候，这种啤酒会像生啤--你在酒吧里喝得那种桶装啤酒--一样流出来。
How it did this was a mystery to most people. All we knew was that it contained a widget.
对大多数人来说，这真的很神秘。我们只知道的是，罐子里面有一个小装置。
'Widget' is thought to have come from the word 'gadget'.
'Widget'被认为是来源于'gadget'这个单词。
The original meaning of this seems to be to describe something that you couldn't think of the word for.
其原始含义应该是指一些你想不出合适的单词（来称呼）的东西。
According to some etymologists (people who research the origins of words),
根据一些词源学家（指的就是那些研究词汇来源的人）表示，
'widget' was a variation of the word 'gadget' which arose in the 1920s or 1930s in the US.
'widget'是'gadget'的一种变化，出现于20世纪20年代到30年代的美国。
Before this, the word 'gadget' seems to have been used by British sailors in the mid to late 19th century
在此之前，'gadget'这个词已经被19世纪中后期的英国水手使用了，
to describe something which they had forgotten the word for.
用来描述那些他们已经忘记怎么称呼的东西。
