Interesting Words: dongle

Never heard the word “dongle” before? Actually, if you are reading this at home then it is likely that you can see several dongles if you look around the room.

Have you heard the word dongle used on TV or in movies? Well, if so, it must have been quite recent. The word seems to have come into use in the New Scientist magazine in 1981, to mean an accessory plugged into a computer. However, it didn’t become a common word until much later. It now means something that you need to plug in to a computer, smartphone, tablet etc for connectivity. You use a dongle to charge your phone, you use a dongle to connect your earphones on a recent iPhone that doesn’t have an earphone socket. A Chromecast is a dongle that you plug into your TV. A dongle is sometimes plugged into a computer, containing license data for software to run.

How many dongles have you collected over the years? Dozens, surely!