monitors

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of monitor.

   The control room had a dozen monitors showing live camera feeds.

   Hall monitors checked passes at every entrance during the assembly.

   Note

   A regular plural that covers every kind of monitor at once: the people who supervise, the screens on a desk, the studio loudspeakers, even the programs used for viewing and editing. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so in a phrase like "security monitors" only the surrounding words settle whether the word names screens or says what someone does. A determiner before it usually marks the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of monitor.

   A nurse monitors each patient's heart rate from the central station.

   The software monitors network traffic and flags anything unusual.

   Note

   The present-tense verb used with a singular subject: a nurse, the software, the agency. The verb is transitive, so it normally takes a direct object, as in "monitors traffic" or "monitors a patient". That object is whatever is being watched over or guarded, and it is often the quickest sign that the word is working as a verb rather than as the plural noun.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialplural

   Small earphones worn by performers on stage to hear a personal mix of vocals and instruments over the crowd.

   Like a private pair of headphones that pipes a custom mix straight to a performer's ears.

   The drummer wears snug-fitting monitors so he can follow the click track over the noise.

   Before the set, the engineer sealed each performer's monitors into their ears and dialed in a custom mix.

   Similarearpieces, earphones

   Note

   A clipped form of in-ear monitors, and it lives only in the plural. A performer wears monitors the way a listener wears earphones, as a pair. It belongs to stage and studio talk, so in writing for a general audience the full phrase "in-ear monitors" is clearer.

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