recorder meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

recorder

noun

UK /ɹiˈkɔː.də/ · US /ɹiˈkɔɹ.dəɹ/

Etymology From Middle English recordour, borrowed from Old French recordour, from Old French recordeor, from Medieval Latin recordātor, from Latin recordor (“call to mind, remember, recollect”), from re- (“back, again”) + cor (“heart; mind”). By surface analysis, record + -er.

An apparatus for recording; a device which records.

Between 8 and 9 p.m., the recorder at a meteorological station at Harrow, Middlesex, picked up 1,470 lightning flashes within a radius of 10 to 15 miles, and observers at the station described the storm as "probably one of the most spectacular of the century."1958 November 23, “Storm Damage in the Home Counties”, in Railway Magazine, page 746:
A smartphone is not the best camera, notebook, word processor, audio recorder, radio, MP3 player, map reader, pedometer and so on, but it is good enough replace numerous separate devices for most people most of the time.2019 June 27, Jack Schofield, “What’s the best cheap tablet or e-reader for PDF files?”, in The Guardian:

Agent Agent noun of record; one who records.

A judge in a municipal court.

recorder

noun

Etymology From Middle English recorder, from record (“to practice (music)”); ultimately cognate with Etymology 1.

Entertainment, Lifestyle, Music A musical instrument of the woodwind family; a type of fipple flute, a simple internal duct flute.

Recorders are made in various sizes, from the high soprano or descant recorder to the low bass recorder.
Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]:

4 more examples

[…] he beheld The city fronted with bright fires, and heard Pipes, and recorders, and the hum of war;1791, Homer, “[The Iliad.] Book 10.”, in W[illiam] Cowper, transl., The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Translated into Blank Verse, […], volume I, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 242, lines 12-14:
On his [Hamlet’s] taking the recorders—very like a little black flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia.1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XII, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 201:
And when they paused on a hilltop for lunch, he whipped out his battered recorder and commenced to tootling “Greensleeves,” scaring off all living creatures within a five-mile radius—which may have been his intention.1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 5, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, New York: Knopf, page 133:
[…] he had huffed into his white plastic recorder while scowling at the sheets of music that lay open on the wobbly stainless-steel stand.2017, Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, New York: Penguin Random House:

Derived terms: alto recorder, bass recorder, contrabass recorder, garklein recorder, great bass recorder, recorderist, recordist, sopranino recorder, soprano recorder, tenor recorder