Other forms: registered, registers, registering
To register is to put your name on an official list so that some body knows you exist. You register with a doctor, register to vote, register for a course, register a birth at the town hall.
The noun is the list itself: the school register, the electoral register, a register of members' interests. Machines register too — the scale registered 82 kilos, the thermometer registered minus nine — and so do faces, in the negative: I said her name and nothing registered, meaning it did not sink in. In language teaching, register means the level of formality you are speaking at, which is why a dictionary marks words formal or informal. The till in a shop is a cash register. Mind the prepositions, because they change with the sense: register WITH a doctor, register FOR a class, register AS self-employed.
1verbregisterTo put your name on an official list.~59%
“You have to register with the council before the deadline.”
2verbrecordTo record something officially.~8%
“They registered the car in her name to keep the insurance down.”
3verbshowTo show or record a measurement.~7%
“The thermometer registered minus nine overnight.”
4verbnoticedTo be noticed or understood by someone.~2%
“I said the name twice and it still did not register.”
5verbstateTo state something formally so that it goes on record.~2%
“Several residents registered objections to the plan.”
6nounitemsAn official written list of names or items.~15%
“Her name was still on the register from last year.”
7nounlevelThe level of formality of the language somebody is using.~7%
“The email is written in far too casual a register for a first approach.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: sign up, enroll
Behind register stands Latin regerō, "to carry back, to record" — re- plus gerō, "to carry". Its plural participle regesta meant the items carried back and written down, a list, and Medieval Latin turned that into registrum. So registering is carrying your name back to be kept. The shape of the word also attracted a false relative, Latin regō, "to rule", which coloured some of its senses and is not related to it at all.
Latin
regesta — list, items recorded
Medieval Latin
registrum
English, today
register
Built from
From Medieval Latin registrum, from Latin regesta (“list, items recorded”), from Latin regero (“to record, to carry back”), from re- + gero (“to carry, bear”). Compare Latin registoria (“a treasurer”). Some senses influenced by association with unrelated Latin rego (“to rule”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA