registers

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of register.

   Genealogists comb through parish registers to trace family lines.

   The accountant cross-checked both cash registers against the day's receipts.

   Note

   One spelling serves the whole noun: books of entries, the single entries inside them, the certificate a vessel carries as proof of its nationality, and even the officials who keep the records. Context separates parish registers from the registers who keep them. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so after a singular subject (the clerk registers) it is the verb, not the noun.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of register.

   The thermometer registers a sharp drop in temperature overnight.

   Her face barely registers surprise when the results are announced.

   Note

   Nearly every use of this present-tense form takes an object: a name, a voter, a reading, a flicker of feeling. The object often decides the meaning. What an instrument registers is recorded, and what a face registers is shown. Only the software sense can stand without one, as when a user registers to unlock the full version of a program, and signing up to vote is usually phrased as registers to vote.

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