c.1200, "to repeat, reiterate, recite; rehearse, get by heart," from Old French recorder "tell, relate, repeat, recite, report, make known" (12c.) and directly from Latin recordari "remember, call to mind, think over, be mindful of," from re- "restore" (see re-) + cor (genitive cordis) "heart" (as the metaphoric seat of memory, cf. learn by heart); see heart.
Meaning "set down in writing" first attested mid-14c.; that of "put sound or pictures on disks, tape, etc." is from 1892. Related: Recorded; recording.
c.1300, "testimony committed to writing," from Old French record "memory, statement, report," from recorder "to record" (see record (v.)). Meaning "written account of some event" is from late 14c. Meaning "disk on which sounds or images have been recorded" is first attested 1878. That of "best or highest recorded achievement in sports, etc." is from 1883. Phrase on the record is from 1900; adverbial phrase off the record "confidentially" is attested from 1906. Record-player attested from 1919.
record re·cord (rĭ-kôrd')
v. re·cord·ed, re·cord·ing, re·cords
To set down for preservation in writing or other permanent form.
To register or indicate.
An account, as of information or facts, set down especially in writing as a means of preserving knowledge.
A medical record.
In dentistry, a registration of desired jaw relations in a plastic material or on a device so that such relations may be transferred to an articulator.
The known history of performance, activities, or achievement.
A collection of related, often adjacent items of computer data, treated as a unit.
data, database, programming
An ordered set of fields, usually stored contiguously. The term is used with similar meaning in several different contexts. In a file, a "record" probably has some fixed length, in contrast to a "line" which may have any length and is terminated by some End Of Line sequence). A database record is also called a "row". In a spreadsheet it is always called a "row". Some programming languages use the term to mean a type composed of fields of several other types (C calls this a "struct").
In all these cases, a record represents an entity with certain field values.
Fields may be of a fixed width (bits or characters) or they may be separated by a delimiter character, often comma (CSV) or HT (TSV).
In a database the list of values of a given field from all records is called a column.
(2002-03-22)