tracker

English

Etymology

track +‎ -er

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ækə(r)

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.
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 samples on parallel timelines.
   • 2004, "dilvie", new.scene.org (on newsgroup alt.music.mods)

     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 (on newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos)

     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

• startracker

Translations

agent noun of track

• Finnish: jäljittäjä (fi) (person); jälkikoira (dog); jäljitin (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 m, Fährtenleserin f, Fährtensucher (de) m, Fährtensucherin (de) f, Verfolger (de) m, Verfolgerin 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)
• Polish: tropiciel (pl) m
• Portuguese: rastreador m, rastreadora f
• Russian: следопыт (ru) m (sledopyt)
• Spanish: rastreador m, rastreadora (es) f
• Turkish: izleyici (tr), takipçi (tr), izci (tr)

light strip of wood in an organ

computer software for composing music

• Finnish: träkkeri

musician who writes music in a tracker

• Finnish: träkkääjä

computer program that monitors something

• Galician: rastrexador m

• German: Tracker
• Spanish: rastreador m

server software that coordinates peers in the BitTorrent protocol

• Hungarian: tracker (hu), nyomonkövető

tracker mortgage — see tracker mortgage

Anagrams

• retrack