Other forms: charts, charted, charting
The charts are the published lists of what is selling or streaming best. Number one in the charts, chart success, a chart hit.
A chart is also a diagram showing information — a bar chart, a pie chart, a flow chart — and that is the sense that matters in reports and presentations. And a chart is a map for sailors or pilots: a nautical chart, an aeronautical chart, and the word is used rather than map because the sea has no landmarks to draw. The verb means to plot on a chart, or to record the course of something: chart the decline, chart progress.
1nounchartA published list of what is selling best.
“It went straight into the charts at three.”
2noundiagramA diagram showing information.
“The chart shows the last ten years side by side.”
3nounmapA map used at sea or in the air.
“The chart shows a shallow patch just there.”
4verbrecordTo record or plot how something changes.
“The book charts the decline of the whole industry.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
chart is a list, diagram or map.
Latin charta meant a sheet of papyrus — the same word behind card, carton and charter. Every sense in English is a sheet with something drawn on it, and the charts of the music industry are the last place you would expect papyrus to have got to.
Latin
charta — paper, card, map
Middle French
charte — card, map
English, today
chart
Middle French charte (“card, map”), from Latin charta (“paper, card, map”), Latin charta (“papyrus, writing”), from Ancient Greek χάρτης (“papyrus, thin sheet”). a doublet of card and carte; related to charter.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA