In graphical UI development, we have buttons, knobs, and sliders and the hypernym would be widgets.
In computer hardware, we have buttons, knobs, and sliders and the hypernym would be … for some reason it isn't coming to mind.
Is it still a widget if it isn't in a graphical user interface?
I wanted to tag this #hardware but apparently, the local ontologist doesn't believe in the existence of hardware.
Best Answer
It's still a widget. Widget was a general term for a small piece of hardware long before software existed. The term was just incorporated into software terminology.
The same thing thing applies to "bug" which originally applied to a fault in wiring, particularly complicated sensitive wiring like telephone and aircraft systems. The idea was that insects had crawled into the wiring, shorted them out with their bodies and not only killed themselves but caused faults which were difficult to identify. Early computers, being large pieces of complex wiring, suffered from "bugs" and the term passed into software terminology as higher level languages enabled more complex programming.