The thing we’re working on or interested in. The focus of our attention. The widget. The Maltese Falcon.
More soberly stated, a collection of one or more elements of hardware, software, and operating procedures intended to exhibit or express one or more features on behalf of an End User during operation.
This term is used throughout this website for three reasons:
1) The only definition eliciting more stupid argument than “states and modes” is “system“, so your humble author usually avoids that word unless no other word will suffice.
2) Use of an unfamiliar term forces the reader to query the intent rather than assume some preferred preconception. That is, your humble author uses it as a rhetorical device to preclude unwarranted assumptions by the Reader with regard to the scope of discussion.
3) Your humble author’s sense of humor will wax wildly out of control if the occasional pressure relief valve isn’t available.
I have a wholly-unsubstantiated theory that the term is corrupted from Immanuel Kant’s theory of “Ding an Sich” (thing-in-itself): more-or-less the idea of a thing as existing independent of observation, that cannot be known except insofar as we sense it. I’m not completely sure about that evolution, because philosophy puts me to sleep right away.
The plural of dingus is, of course, “dingae”.