Tech terms you may not know - Bricking

Bricking is a term used these days to describe an electronic device such as a tablet, smartphone, game console, digital camera, router etc. which as a result of a serious misconfiguration (or your bad luck...lol) ends up with a corrupted firmware or other hardware problems which causes it to no longer function.

“Bricking” essentially means that your device has turned into a expensive brick or paperweight.

A bricked device will not power on, boot up and/or function as it normally should.  That being said, most bricked devices cannot be fixed through "normal means", it often would require some hacking wizardry -   something that is beyond the realm of the "normal, common Joe".

So what causes a device to be bricked?
In most cases bricking is due to something going terribly wrong during the updating of the device's firmware and/or other low-level system software.  It can be a case where

1. the device's battery goes dead during the update process
2. the person accidentally unplugs the device before the operation completes
3. the computer being used to do the updating experiences some sort of problem

So what now?

Well, you can try the device's recovery mode (if it has one), contact the manufacturer or try your luck in the online forums.  

The bottom line is this - there is no guarantee your bricked device will ever work again which is why you should BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS PRECISELY when you decide to update firmware or system software on your expensive gadget/device.

NB:  You may sometimes hear persons talking about a "soft-brick", this is an improper use of the term.  For example, if you made a mistake while "jailbreaking" your iPhone, you can use the DFU mode (Device Firmware Update) to repair it which means the device was never really, technically bricked.