roster

Pluralrosters

Formsrosters, rostering, rostered

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A list of the individuals or groups belonging to an organization, such as personnel in a military unit, eligible players on a sports team, or students enrolled in a class.

   The captain checked the roster to confirm which players were available for the final.

   The sergeant read the names off the unit roster at morning formation.

   Similarlist, register, roll, lineup

   Note

   A word that traveled from the kitchen to the office: Dutch rooster meant a gridiron before it meant a table or list, and it comes from roosten, "to roast," kin to English roast. The list need not be of people. Railway writers keep rosters of engines, and David P. Morgan's Steam's Finest Hour (1959) has locomotives finding "their way onto the Union Pacific roster." Things and people alike are on a roster.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A list of the tasks to be carried out by members of an organization, often noting the date and time each one is expected to be done.

   The duty roster told each nurse which rounds to handle and when.

   Our scout leader drew up a roster of camp duties for the weekend.

   Similarrota, schedule, list

3. 3
   nouncountable

   A work schedule listing the days and shifts that each employee of a business is due to work.

   The new roster has me working three evenings and two mornings this week.

   Head office released the holiday roster a month before the busy season.

   Similarrota, schedule, timetable

4. 4
   verbtransitive

   To enter a person's name onto a roster.

   The duty officer rostered three nurses for the night shift.

   Management will roster you for the early slot next week.

   Similarschedule, assign, book

   Note

   The verb puts a name into a slot, and the slot chooses the preposition. You are rostered for cleaning duties, but in railway usage an engine is rostered to a train, as when Trains Illustrated in 1961 reports No. 35018 "rostered to the 7.20 a.m. Eastleigh-Waterloo." Like the list of members, the verb happily counts machines, and a railway can be said to roster hundreds of engine types.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A way of writing a set as a bracketed list that shows each of its elements.

   She expressed the set of vowels as a roster: {a, e, i, o, u}.

   For finite sets, a roster lists every element between braces.

   Note

   Mathematicians call this roster notation: every member is written out between braces and separated by commas. Its counterpart is set-builder notation, which describes the members by a defining property instead of naming them. The roster is the explicit choice, since you see each element, so it suits finite sets, while a rule is what you reach for when listing would never end.

6. 6
   verbtransitive

   In mathematics, to specify a set by writing out its members in a list enclosed in curly brackets.

   Students learned to roster a set before moving on to set-builder notation.

   He rostered the solution set as {0, 1}.

   Note

   The verb behind roster notation takes the set itself as its object: you roster the solution set, not its elements. Doing so means naming each member between braces, as in {0, 1}, rather than stating the property they share. In ordinary prose, "list the elements" carries the same instruction, so the verb belongs mainly to the mathematics classroom.

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