MONITOR (from Lat. monere, to warn, advise)

This article appears in Volume V18, Page 723 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MOL-MOS

MONITOR (from Lat. monere, to warn, advise) , an advisor or counsellor, one who warns another person as to his course of action, also used of things that are more or less personified, as conscience. The word is chiefly applied to senior pupils (also known as " prefects ") in some of the

great

GREAT

secondary schools in England; in America to senior students in certain colleges to whom

special

SPECIAL

duties are assigned, particularly that of keeping order; and also to pupil teachers in

English

ENGLISH

elementary schools. It is used in a general way of anything that gives warning, and in this sense is applied to a lizard of the family Monitoridae, or Varanidae, found in Africa and Australia, which is supposed to give warning of the approach of crocodiles. The name of monitor was also given to a particular kind of ironclad invented for the American navy by Captain John Ericsson (q.v.) in 1862, which had a very low freeboard and revolving gun-turrets. The

letter

LETTER (through Fr. lettre from Lat. littera or litera, letter of the
alphabet
- ALPHABET (see also WRITING)
; the origin of the Latin word is obscure; it has probably no connexion with the root of linere, to smear, i.e. with wax, for an inscription with a stilus)

of Ericsson to the assistant secretary of the navy, of the loth of January 1862 (quoted in the Century Dictionary), gives the inventor's reason for the name. " The impregnable and aggressive character of this structure will admonish the leaders of the Southern Rebellion that the batteries on the banks
of their rivers will no longer present barriers to the entrance of the

Union

forces. The ironclad intruder will thus prove a severe monitor to those leaders . . . `

Downing

DOWNING, SIR GEORGE

Street

STREET
STREET, GEORGE EDMUND (1824-1881)

' will hardly view with indifference this last ` Yankee notion,' this monitor." It is also the name of an ironclad railway truck used for carrying a big gun. In America the raised

part

PART

of the roof of a railway carriage or

omnibus

OMNIBUS (Lat. " for all ")

in which the lights or ventilators are placed is known as a monitor roof or top. In mining the word is applied to a jointed nozzle which may be turned in all directions, and is used in hydraulic mining.

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