What's a "widget"?

[dwolf]

This is not very important, but it bugs me. New to Linux, I am reading through a lot of, admittedly, somewhat randomly chosen literature. I repeatedly encountered the word "widget" and I have no idea what it is. I am German and consulted a dictionary, but that didn't help much. What is a "widget", please?
Thanks

[godot]

it's a button in an X program, they're called widgets for some strange reason

[knight]

I am no English also, but as I understand it, a widget is a library of user interface components, like a button, a text box, a list box and the similar.
Windows uses one widget libray which was changed from win3.1 to win95.
Linux in the other hand uses many widget libraries as linux is an open sources free system many others can be used, but kde chooses one while gnome uses one

I hope I am correct, if not please some one correct me

[ 13 July 2001: Message edited by: knight ]