Other forms: devices
A device is a machine or piece of equipment made for a particular purpose. A medical device, a listening device, back up your devices.
In everyday speech now it usually means a phone, tablet or laptop, and your devices means all of them together. The word also means a plan or a trick, which is older and formal: a device to avoid tax. And in literature, a device is a technique — a rhetorical device, a plot device — which is very common in criticism. Note leave somebody to their own devices, meaning to let them get on without help or supervision.
1noundeviceA machine or piece of equipment made for a purpose.
“The device fits in a pocket and does almost everything.”
2nountechniqueA technique used in writing or speech.
“Repetition is the oldest device there is.”
3nounplanA plan or trick.
“The whole arrangement was a device to avoid the charge.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
device is a machine or technique.
Old French devis meant a plan or intention, from Latin dividere, to divide — the same verb as divide and devise. A device was a scheme before it was a machine, and the two senses split apart in English while staying one word.
Old French
devis
Middle English
devis
English, today
device
Built from
From Middle English devis, from Old French devis. From Middle English devis, devise, devyce, devys, devyse, from Old French devis and devise, from Latin dīvīsus, past participle of dīvidō (“to divide”). a doublet of devise#Noun.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA