tracker
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɹækə(ɹ)/
rhymes: -ækə(ɹ)
Forms: form: trackers
Etymology: From track + -er.
Senses: examples: text: On Friday night, eight US Air Force KC-135 Stratotankers took off from Altus, Oklahoma, according to data from FlightRadar24. Over Kansas the tankers refueled two groups of planes, identified on air traffic control audio by their callsigns MYTEE11 FLT and MYTEE21 FLT. The callsign MYTEE has previously been associated with special activity flights by B-2 bombers, and multiple flight trackers on social media said the planes being refueled were B-2 bombers out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
ref: 2025 June 21, Thomas Bordeaux, Natasha Bertrand and Zachary Cohen, “US moves B-2 bombers as Trump weighs Iran options”, in CNN:
glosses: Agent noun of track; one who, or that which, tracks or pursues, as a man or dog that follows game.
examples: text: While she and Mr. Fetterman were often in different places, she would turn up at events early so she could shoot and post photos of the crowds, the lines, the people. At most events there was a tracker: a guy from the Oz team who monitored the goings-on.
ref: 2022 December 17, Judith Newman, “John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Dec 2022:
topics: government
politics
glosses: Agent noun of track; one who, or that which, tracks or pursues, as a man or dog that follows game.
A person employed to follow and monitor a political rival.
glosses: In an organ, a light strip of wood connecting (in path) a key and a pallet, to communicate motion by pulling.
examples: text: Trackers have broken out of the demoscene, are are^([sic]) now in use by thousands of professional musicians. It's not uncommon to hear about people using trackers on DJ forums, and electronic music production communities[…]
ref: 2004, dilvie, “new.scene.org”, in alt.music.mods (Usenet):
text: Although there were a few game companies outside the Amiga scene that used a tracker format (Epic Mega-Games, for instance), the majority used the better-supported MIDI.
ref: 2008, Karen Collins, Game sound:
text: At the time, tracking chiptunes (i.e. using trackers) was the fundamental method of chipmusic-making.
ref: 2018, Dafni Tragaki, Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A type of computer software for composing music by aligning notes or samples on parallel timelines.
examples: text: You can always find musicians. There are more trackers than coders, pixelers, organizers, couriers, and designers combined.
ref: 1999, Adrian Dunn, “Re: Using a scanned picture in your demo”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (Usenet):
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A musician who writes music in a tracker.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A computer program that monitors something.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A computer program that monitors something.
Server software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol.
qualifier: file sharing
topics: business
finance
glosses: A tracker mortgage.
Derived terms: activity tracker
half-tracker
inch tracker
IP tracker
solar tracker
startracker