A Tamagotchi is a small egg-shaped electronic toy with a tiny screen and a few buttons, holding a pet that you have to look after. It beeps when it is hungry or dirty, and you press the buttons to feed it, clean up after it, play with it. If you ignore it long enough, it dies. That last part is why a whole generation remembers them. It is a brand name — Bandai made them, and they were everywhere in the late 1990s. But like Hoover or Post-it, people use it for the whole idea, so any virtual pet may get called a Tamagotchi even if another company made it. The word has grown a second life as a comparison. When people say something "is like a Tamagotchi" or "needs Tamagotchi-level attention", they mean it keeps demanding small bits of care, again and again, and you cannot walk away from it. People say it about apps, houseplants, needy projects, sometimes a new job. It is light and a bit joking; nobody uses it in serious writing. Writing note: it is a name, so a capital T is normal, though you will also see it lowercase now that it has become a general word. The plural is usually Tamagotchis.

電子雞（塔麻可吉）。台灣一般就講「電子雞」，Bandai 的商品名音譯是「塔麻可吉」，年輕一輩比較知道音譯，四五年級生講電子雞都懂。