monitor
Pluralmonitors
Verbmonitors, monitoring, monitored
Pluralmonitors
Formsmonitors, monitoring, monitored
- 1A screen-based device, similar to a television, that displays the visual output of a computer.
He connected a second monitor to extend his desktop workspace.
The graphic designer calibrated her monitor to display accurate colors.
Note
The hardware sense in computing: information appears on the monitor, not in it, just as it appears on a screen. Elsewhere in computing the word names software, either a viewing-and-editing program or the command line itself. Context decides whether a monitor is something you look at or something you type into.
- 2To keep watch over someone or something, guarding it or tracking its condition over time.
Security guards monitor the building's entrances around the clock.
The agency monitors air quality across the region.
Similarwatch, track, observe, check, supervise
Note
In use the verb leans toward measuring more than guarding. Patients, pollutants and global temperatures are all monitored, often in the passive, as when ambient SO₂ "was monitored using a mobile station." The -ing form also works as a noun of its own, as in climate monitoring service or resource monitoring. The verb always takes a direct object: you monitor something, never monitor over it.
- 3A person who watches over something, or who is placed in charge of someone or something.
Each dormitory has a monitor responsible for keeping order at night.
The election monitors reported no signs of fraud at the polling stations.
Similarsupervisor, observer, overseer
Note
The word began as Latin for "warner": monitor, from monere, "to warn, admonish, remind." Charles Sprague's To My Cigar (1829) keeps that flavor, calling the cigar "a monitor, though still" that speaks "a lesson to my heart." That monitor watches and also teaches. Modern use leans toward supervision instead: camp monitors and election monitors keep watch and report rather than lecture.
- 4
- 5A loudspeaker used in studios or on stage so performers can hear their own sound accurately.
The sound engineer adjusted each monitor before the show began.
Studio monitors reveal flaws that ordinary speakers smooth over.
- 6A large lizard of the genus Varanus, with a long neck, forked tongue, and powerful tail.
The zookeeper fed the monitor a mix of eggs and raw meat.
Monitors use their forked tongues to track prey by scent.
- 7A small armored warship with only one or two gun turrets, built for shore bombardment or river warfare rather than open-sea battle.
The navy sent a monitor upriver to shell the enemy fortifications.
Each monitor carried far heavier guns than its small size suggested.
Note
A ship type named after one ship: USS Monitor, the first of its kind, gave its name to every vessel built on the same pattern. With the prefix, USS Monitor names that single ship; lowercase, a monitor is any member of the class. The archaic "ironclad" use stretched the name further, to armored warships in general.
- 8A program used for viewing and editing data or files.
Programmers loaded a monitor to inspect and patch the running code.
The disk monitor displayed each sector so it could be edited directly.
Note
This is software, not hardware, though it shares a name with the screen. It is usually named by what it lets you inspect. A machine code monitor, for instance, shows the raw instructions of a program and lets them be altered. Keep it distinct from the command-line sense, which names an interface rather than a tool for viewing and editing.
- 9A nozzle that directs a high-pressure jet of water, used in firefighting, mining, or industrial cleaning.
Crews swung the deck monitor toward the base of the flames.
A high-pressure monitor washed the loose gravel down the slope.
- 10A low, turret-shaped tool holder for a lathe that revolves on a vertical pivot to bring several tools into position one after another.
By rotating the monitor, the operator cycled through several cutting tools without stopping.
The lathe's monitor held six tools on its pivoting head.
- 11The command-line interface of an operating system, where instructions are entered as typed text.
She entered each instruction at the monitor and waited for the system to respond.
The old computer dropped you straight into the monitor at startup.
Note
It belongs to dated computing vocabulary, from machines that dropped the user straight into a prompt waiting for typed commands. In historical writing about early systems the word can stand. Elsewhere it invites confusion with the screen on the desk, so a modern reader may need the meaning spelled out.
- 12An ironclad warship: a vessel protected by plating of iron or steel.
The fleet's monitor shrugged off cannon fire that would have sunk older vessels.
Naval crews regarded the monitor as nearly unsinkable in its day.
Note
An older, looser use that stretched one ship's name over a whole class. The warship meaning comes from USS Monitor, and here it covers any ironclad, not only the small turreted warship. Because this broad sense now reads as archaic, modern writing keeps monitor for the turreted type and uses ironclad for armored warships in general. That keeps the two meanings from blurring.
- 13A student given authority to keep order or take charge of tasks in a classroom.
The teacher appointed a monitor to keep the room quiet during her absence.
But it was not so—at least, not always—for though they fell out among themselves, they united their forces against the common enemy—the monitors!
1881, Talbot Baines Reed, The Fifth Form at St. Dominic'sNote
The school word splits by region. In British use it belongs to the past: Talbot Baines Reed's The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1881) has rival schoolboys uniting against "the common enemy—the monitors!" In Hong Kong and Singapore it is ordinary classroom vocabulary, with class monitor elections and duties like distributing worksheets and keeping discipline. Use it freely there; in Britain it reads as period detail.
- 14A person who admonishes others: warning of faults, recalling them to duty, or giving advice by way of reproof or caution.
Note
Here the word still does the job of the Latin "warner" behind the overseer sense: it reproves. Francis Bacon, advising Sir George Villiers around 1620, writes "You need not be a monitor to your gracious master the king." The construction is a monitor to someone. By 1873 the Gardeners' Chronicle could call a ticklish haysel and a flooded harvest "monitors," warnings sent by the weather. The sense is obsolete now.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of monitor apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
From Latin monitor ("warner"), from the perfect passive participle monitus ("warning"), from the verb monere ("to warn, admonish, remind"). The warship sense comes from the USS Monitor, the first ship of this type.