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monitor

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈmɒn.ɪ.tə//
  • United States//ˈmɑ.nɪ.tɚ//
  • United States/[ˈmɑ.nɪ.ɾɚ]/
  • United States//ˈmɑ.nə.tɚ//

Someone who watches over something; a person in charge of something or someone.

noun

  1. 1

    Someone who watches over something; a person in charge of something or someone.

    The camp monitors look after the children during the night, when the teachers are asleep.

    And oft, mild friend, to me thou art A monitor, though still; Thou speak'st a lesson to my heart, Beyond the preacher's skill.

  2. 2

    A device that detects and informs on the presence, quantity, etc., of something.

  3. 3

    A device similar to a television set used as to give a graphical display of the output from a computer.

    The information flashed up on the monitor.

  4. 4

    A studio monitor or loudspeaker.

  5. 5

    A program for viewing and editing.

    a machine code monitor

  6. 6

    datedThe command line interface of an operating system.

  7. 7

    archaicA student leader in a class.

    So, as she did not like the masters to be prying about the play-ground out of school, she chose from among the biggest and most trustworthy of her pupils five monitors, who had authority over the rest of the Boys, and kept the unruly ones in order.

    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!

    He learned that a monitor should assist the teachers in distributing worksheets, maintaining class discipline, helping classmates in need and so on.

  8. 8

    A relatively small armored warship with only one or two turrets (but often carrying unusually large guns for a warship of its size), usually designed for shore bombardment or riverine warfare rather than open-ocean combat.

  9. 9

    A monitor lizard (Varanus spp. and extinct relatives in family Varanidae).

  10. 10

    A tool holder, as for a lathe, shaped like a low turret, and capable of being revolved on a vertical pivot so as to bring several tools successively into position.

  11. 11

    A monitor nozzle.

  12. 12

    obsoleteOne who admonishes; one who warns of faults, informs of duty, or gives advice and instruction by way of reproof or caution.

    c. 1620, Francis Bacon, letter of advice to Sir George Villiers You need not be a monitor to your gracious master the king.

    There has been no lack of other monitors — a ticklish haysel, a flooded harvest all through the north […]

  13. 13

    archaicAn ironclad warship with a low freeboard and a rotating turret.

  14. 14

    A modern shallow-draft warship for coastal bombardment.

Etymology

From Latin monitor (“warner”), from perfect passive participle monitus (“warning”), from verb monere (“to warn, admonish, remind”). Warship sense is from USS Monitor, the first ship of this type.

verb

  1. 1

    To watch over; to guard.

    Monitoring refers to keeping a watch over patients to ensure that they are practising what they have learnt about disability prevention correctly.

    During July 1989-February 1990 ambient SO₂, was monitored using a mobile station in the residential-commercial neighborhood of Copacabana.

    The NOAA monitors global temperatures and records on a monthly and an annual basis, not daily. […] Various parts of the world have been experiencing heatwaves and on Thursday the EU’s climate monitoring service said the world had experienced its hottest June on record last month.

Forms

plural
monitors
past tense
monitored
past participle
monitored
present participle
monitoring
third person singular
monitors
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).