- record
- record vb Record, register, list, enroll, catalog can mean to commit to writing for the sake of immediate or future use.Record usually implies as its purpose the making of an exact or official entry or statement which gives evidence of the facts involved; the act serves as an aid or a check to memory or as a means of supplying details unlikely to be remembered indefinitely{
record the proceedings of a meeting
}{record the events of each day in a diary
}{record a deed in the county clerk's office
}{in all recorded history, nothing like this has happened before
}Register usually implies accurate entry into a formal record of facts or particulars of a certain kind which require or deserve recording{required by law to register all births
}{all purchases are registered in our books
}Sometimes register carries a further or a slightly different implication; thus, one registers a letter by payment of a special fee and obtaining a receipt to ensure its safe delivery by requiring a record of each person who handles it; a ther-mometer registers the temperature when the mercury expands or contracts to a certain mark in degrees.List implies an entering in a list (as of names, figures, needs, or events){list the achievements of an athlete
}{list alphabetically the books you have read
}{list the survivors of an accident
}{list the food needed for the party
}{list your expenses carefully
}Enroll may add to list the notion of setting apart those entered in a distinctive category (as members of a body or adherents of a person or cause) and therefore may connote a winning over, an enlisting, or an admission to membership{interested persons are invited to enroll themselves as members of the society
}{those who are . . . tempted to enroll themselves as soldiers— Malthus
}{as he goes on, he ... enrolls a following— Montague
}Enroll is sometimes also used of things in the sense of record, but in its more usual extended sense, it also includes the connotation of honoring{enroll your triumphs o'er the seas and land— Pope
}Catalog commonly implies an enumeration of all items making up a class or group, usually with descriptive or defining details{catalog the books in a library
}{the porcelains in the collection needed to be cataloged
}{allowing time to catalog the items to be sold at auction
}Catalog may also imply assignment of an item to its proper place in a list or sometimes in a category{the book has not yet been cataloged
}{a specimen impossible to catalog in the existent classification often turns out to be a new species
}Analogous words: *enter, admit, introducerecord n *document, monument, archive
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
