clicked

Clicked is the past tense and past participle of the verb click. The term has several related senses: it can describe producing a small, sharp sound by a mechanical switch, or, more commonly today, pressing a button or link with a mouse, touchpad, or keyboard.

In computing and digital interfaces, clicking is a basic user action. A left-click typically selects or activates a control, a right-click opens a context menu, and a double-click can open an item or execute a default action. A click can initiate navigation, submit a form, or trigger a software response. In programming, click events are handled by event listeners across languages and frameworks; HTML and many UI toolkits use terms like onclick to denote a click handler.

Etymology traces the word to the sound of a small mechanical action engaging. The sense of a brief, sharp sound existed before computers, and with the rise of graphical user interfaces, the verb extended to describe the act of interacting with on-screen elements.

Metaphorically, click can also describe a cognitive moment. In common usage, "it clicked" or "the idea clicked" signals sudden understanding or realization.

In marketing and analytics, to click a hyperlink is to register an interaction, often analyzed via metrics such as the click-through rate (CTR), the ratio of clicks to impressions. This usage highlights how the term has become central to online navigation and engagement measurement.