- 1加密狗（讓正版軟體跑得起來的小插頭；不是隨身碟）
In its first meaning, a dongle is a small you must plug into a computer before a particular program will run. It is a physical key: the software looks for it, and if it is not there, the program stays locked. The word is informal, from the computer world, and a little dated in this strict sense — you meet it in offices that still use old paid software, and in explanations of how copy-protection used to work. People now stretch dongle to almost any small USB extra that sticks out of a laptop: a wifi stick, a video adapter, and so on. That looser use is common; the sense you are studying is the software-key one. It is not a memory stick, which stores files. Nobody is sure where the word came from. It most likely grew out of dangle, because the thing often hangs off the machine on a short lead. An advertisement once pretended it came from a man named Don Gall; that story was made up. The word starts appearing around 1980–1985.
組成Unknown. Likely from dangle, because these little extras often hang off a computer on a flexible cable. The claim that it comes from a man named Don Gall was invented for an advertisement.
同家族的字
- danglethe probable source — something hanging off the side of a machine
原始詞典資料2 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
donglenoun/ˈdɒŋɡl̩/
- 1
computer-hardwarecomputingengineeringAny small device that plugs into an electronic device, typically a computer, and alters its functionality. Common examples include wireless modems, digital media players, software copy protect devices, and adapters.
- FreedomPop will offer three different flavors of broadband: a USB dongle that allows you to connect your computer to the internet, a WiFi hotspot device, and an iPhone case that allows you to override the phone's existing network and use it as a FreedomPop hotspot.
- 2
computer-hardwarecomputingengineeringA hardware device used by a specific application for purposes of copy protection.
- Take the dongle, for example. It is the summit of copy protection, an explicit melding of software and hardware. Without the right hardware key—the dongle—plugged into the machine's parallel port, the software won't run.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。