tracker

English

Etymology

From track +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɹækə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ækə(ɹ)

Noun

tracker (plural trackers)

1. agent noun of track; one who, or that which, tracks or pursues, as a man or dog that follows game.
   1. (US politics) A person employed to follow and monitor a political rival.
      • 2022 December 17, Judith Newman, “John Fetterman’s TikTok Whisperer”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

        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.

2. In an organ, a light strip of wood connecting (in path) a key and a pallet, to communicate motion by pulling.
3. (computing) A type of computer software for composing music by aligning notes or samples on parallel timelines.
   • 2004, dilvie, “new.scene.org”, in alt.music.mods (Usenet):

     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 […]

   • 2008, Karen Collins, Game sound:

     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.

   • 2018, Dafni Tragaki, Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music:

     At the time, tracking chiptunes (i.e. using trackers) was the fundamental method of chipmusic-making.

4. (computing) A musician who writes music in a tracker.
   • 1999, Adrian Dunn, “Re: Using a scanned picture in your demo”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (Usenet):

     You can always find musicians. There are more trackers than coders, pixelers, organizers, couriers, and designers combined.

5. (computing) A computer program that monitors something.
   1. (file sharing) Server software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol.
6. (finance) A tracker mortgage.

Derived terms

• activity tracker
• half-tracker
• inch tracker
• IP tracker
• solar tracker
• startracker

 

Translations

agent noun of track

• Finnish: jäljittäjä (fi) (person); jälkikoira (dog); jäljitin (fi) (device)
• French: pisteur (fr) m, traqueur (fr) m, poursuivant (fr) m
• Galician: rastrexador m, rastrexadora f
• German: Aufspürer m, Aufspürerin f, Fährtenfinder m, Fährtenfinderin f, Fährtenleser (de) m, Fährtenleserin f, Fährtensucher (de) m, Fährtensucherin (de) f, Verfolger (de) m, Verfolgerin (de) f
• Greek: ιχνηλάτης (el) m (ichnilátis), ανιχνευτής (el) m (anichneftís)

  Ancient Greek: ἰχνευτής m (ikhneutḗs)

• Irish: rianaí m
• Japanese: 追跡者 (ついせきしゃ, tsuisekisha)
• Latin: vestigator m
• Polish: tropiciel (pl) m
• Portuguese: rastreador m, rastreadora f
• Russian: следопы́т (ru) m (sledopýt)
• Southern Altai: исчи (isči)
• Spanish: rastreador m, rastreadora (es) f, huellero m (America)
• Turkish: izleyici (tr), takipçi (tr), izci (tr)

light strip of wood in an organ

computer software for composing music

• Finnish: träkkeri
• Japanese: トラッカー (torakkā)
• Korean: 트래커 (teuraekeo)
• Russian: тре́кер (ru) m (trɛ́ker)

musician who writes music in a tracker

• Finnish: träkkääjä

computer program that monitors something

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 追踪器 (zhuīzōngqì)

• Galician: rastrexador m
• German: Tracker
• Japanese: トラッカー (torakkā)
• Korean: 트래커 (teuraekeo)
• Russian: тре́кер (ru) m (trɛ́ker)
• Spanish: rastreador m

server software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol

• Hungarian: tracker (hu), nyomonkövető
• Russian: тре́кер (ru) m (trɛ́ker)

tracker mortgage — see tracker mortgage

Anagrams

• retrack