tablet

Pluraltablets

Formstablets, tableting, tableted

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A small, easily swallowed portion of a substance in solid form, especially medicine.

   She crushed a tablet into the baby's applesauce.

   Each blister pack holds twenty-eight tablets.

   Similarpill

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A portable computer built around a single flat touchscreen panel, larger than a phone but smaller than a laptop.

   He sketched the layout on a tablet during the meeting.

   Many schools now issue tablets instead of textbooks.

   Note

   The name keeps the image of the inscribed slab, a flat thing you hold and write on, and puts a computer behind it. The touchscreen is the primary input surface, and the device typically runs a mobile operating system. That operating system separates it from a laptop as much as size does. People read, work or sketch on a tablet, using on as they would with a screen.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A block of blank paper sheets bound together along the top edge; a pad of paper.

   The detective flipped his tablet shut and pocketed his pen.

   Students filled their tablets with notes during the lecture.

   Similarpad, notepad, notebook

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A flat slab of clay, stone, or wood prepared for carving or writing an inscription.

   Scribes pressed symbols into the wet clay tablet with a reed.

   Several stone tablets recorded the king's laws.

   Similarslab, plaque

   Note

   Here the word's origin shows most plainly: Middle English tablet, from Old French tablete, a diminutive of table, so literally a little table or board. The same word names the inscribed memorial plaque set into a church wall. Stephen Roberts, writing in RAIL in 2023, notes that a clergyman "has a tablet in St John's church," meaning a commemorative inscription rather than a writing surface.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A flat input device on which a user draws with a stylus to create or edit digital images.

   The illustrator inked every panel on a pressure-sensitive tablet.

   Designers prefer tablets for retouching fine detail.

   Note

   Short for graphics tablet: a sensing surface that turns the movement and pressure of a stylus into digital coordinates, which is why illustrators value it for freehand line. Where context could suggest the tablet computer, say graphics tablet in full. Both are flat and both may take a pen, but this one is an input device that feeds another machine.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   To compress a drug or other substance into tablet form.

   The plant tablets thousands of doses each hour.

   Manufacturers tablet the active ingredient with a binder to hold it together.

   Similarcompress

   Note

   A manufacturing verb made from the noun, usually spelled with a single t in its inflections: tableting, tableted. The doubled forms tabletting and tabletted also occur, but less commonly. The process compresses a powdered or granulated formulation under high pressure, often with binders and disintegrants added to control how the dose holds together and releases.

7. 7
   noundialectalScotlanduncountable

   A confection like fudge but with a grainier texture, made from sugar, condensed milk, and butter and set in flat slabs.

   Her grandmother's tablet crumbled pleasantly between the teeth.

   The bakery sells tablet alongside shortbread and toffee.

   Note

   A Scottish sweet whose name needs no explaining in Scotland, though elsewhere it may suggest the pill. It is usually a mass noun: you buy tablet, or a piece of tablet. Its difference from fudge lies in the bite. The same sugar, condensed milk and butter set into something grainier, so it crumbles rather than yields.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   A short scripture composed by one of the founders of the Baháʼí Faith.

   The community studies a tablet revealed by Baháʼu'lláh each week.

   Many of these tablets address questions of ethics and worship.

   Note

   Bahá'í usage speaks of a tablet as revealed rather than written, because these texts are held to come from God through Baháʼu'lláh, the Báb or ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. Many take the form of letters addressed to individuals or communities. They range from brief devotional pieces to substantial doctrinal works, so the word marks the kind of text and its authority, not its length.

9. 9
   nouncountable

   A round token that grants a train authority to proceed over a single-track section of line.

   The signalman handed the tablet to the engine driver as the train slowed.

   Only the train holding the tablet could enter the single-track section.

   Similartoken

   Note

   Single-track safety made into an object: typically a metal disc held in a mechanically interlocked instrument, so that only the crew carrying it may occupy the section. Handling it mattered. A 1939 Railway Magazine piece on New Zealand locomotive performance blames an out-of-course stop of three minutes on the mishap of dropping the tablet at Ohau.

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