recorder

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɹiˈkɔː.də/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɹiˈkɔɹ.dəɹ/, /ɹə-/
• Hyphenation: re‧cord‧er

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)də(ɹ)

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.

recorder (plural recorders)

1. An apparatus for recording; a device which records.
   • 2019 June 27, Jack Schofield, “What’s the best cheap tablet or e-reader for PDF files?”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     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.

2. Agent noun of record; one who records.
3. A judge in a municipal court.

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

recorder (plural recorders)

2. (music) A musical instrument of the woodwind family; a type of fipple flute, a simple internal duct flute.

   Synonyms: English flute, sweet flute

   Recorders are made in various sizes, from the high soprano or descant recorder to the low bass recorder.

   • 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]:

     Indeed he hath played on his prologue like a child on a recorder; a sound, but not in government.

   • 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:

     […] he beheld
     The city fronted with bright fires, and heard
     Pipes, and recorders, and the hum of war;

   • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XII, in Great Expectations […], volume II, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 201:

     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.

   • 1982, Anne Tyler, chapter 5, in Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant‎^[2], New York: Knopf, page 133:

     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.

   • 2017, Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic‎^[3], New York: Penguin Random House:

     […] he had huffed into his white plastic recorder while scowling at the sheets of music that lay open on the wobbly stainless-steel stand.

   • 2023 August 24, “Why old recorders hit a dull note”, in The Guardian‎^[4]:

     Recorder players today will disagree, and probably hate me for saying so, but all these “historically authentic” recorders used today generally produce – with rare exceptions – a rather plain, lifeless, non-vibrato, non-singing performance. This appeals only to recorder players themselves, early music fans and academic music specialists.

• “recorder”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• re-record, rerecord

Inherited from Middle French recorder, from Old French recorder, from Latin recordārī (“call to mind, remember, recollect”), from re- (“back, again”) + cor (“heart; mind”).

recorder

1. to say something repetitively in order to learn

   As-tu recordé ta leçon?

   (please add an English translation of this usage example)

• recordation
• record

From re- +‎ corder.

recorder

1. to restring

• “recorder”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

recorder

1. first-person singular present active subjunctive of recordor

From Old French recorder.

recorder

1. to record; to register; to make a record (of)

   recorder une histoire

   to make a record of a story

• Middle French conjugation varies from one text to another. Hence, the following conjugation should be considered as typical, not as exhaustive.

• French: recorder

From Latin recordārī.

recorder

1. to record; to register
2. to recall; to remember

This verb conjugates as a first-group verb ending in -er. The forms that would normally end in *-d, *-ds, *-dt are modified to t, z, t. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

• recort
• recordeor

• Middle French: recorder
  • French: recorder
• → Middle English: recorden
  • English: record

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (recorder)