1. [n]  the sum of recognized accomplishments; "the lawyer has a good record"; "the track record shows that he will be a good president"
2. [n]  an extreme attainment; the best (or worst) performance ever attested (as in a sport); "he tied the Olympic record"; "coffee production last year broke all previous records"; "Chicago set the homicide record"
3. [n]  sound recording consisting of a disc with continuous grooves; formerly used to reproduce music by rotating while a phonograph needle tracked in the grooves
4. [n]  a list of crimes for which an accused person has been previously convicted; "he ruled that the criminal record of the defendant could not be disclosed to the court"; "the prostitute had a record a mile long"
5. [n]  a compilation of the known facts regarding something or someone; "Al Smith used to say, `Let's look at the record'"; "his name is in all the recordbooks"
6. [n]  anything (such as a document or a phonograph record or a photograph) providing permanent evidence of or information about past events; "the film provided a valuable record of stage techniques"
7. [n]  a document that can serve as legal evidence of a transaction; "they could find no record of the purchase"
8. [n]  the number of wins versus losses and ties a team has had; "at 9-0 they have the best record in their league"
9. [v]  register electronically
10. [v]  make a record of; set down in permanent form
11. [v]  be or provide a memorial to a person or an event; "This sculpture commemorates the victims of the concentration camps"; "We memorialized the Dead"
12. [v]  indicate a certain reading; of gauges and instruments; "The thermometer showed thirteen degrees below zero"; "The gauge read `empty'"
13. [v]  be aware of; "Did you register any change when I pressed the button?"

1. \Re*cord"\ (r?*k?rd"), v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Recorded}; p.
   pr. & vb. n. {Recording}.] [OE. recorden to repeat, remind,
   F. recorder, fr. L. recordari to remember; pref. re- re- +
   cor, cordis, the heart or mind. See {Cordial}, {Heart}.]
   1. To recall to mind; to recollect; to remember; to meditate.
      [Obs.] ``I it you record.'' --Chaucer.
   2. To repeat; to recite; to sing or play. [Obs.]
            They longed to see the day, to hear the lark Record
            her hymns, and chant her carols blest. --Fairfax.
   3. To preserve the memory of, by committing to writing, to
      printing, to inscription, or the like; to make note of; to
      write or enter in a book or on parchment, for the purpose
      of preserving authentic evidence of; to register; to
      enroll; as, to record the proceedings of a court; to
      record historical events.
            Those things that are recorded of him . . . are
            written in the chronicles of the kings. --1 Esd. i.
                                                  42.
   {To record a deed}, {mortgage}, {lease}, etc., to have a copy
      of the same entered in the records of the office
      designated by law, for the information of the public.
   

2. \Re*cord"\, v. i.
   1. To reflect; to ponder. [Obs.]
            Praying all the way, and recording upon the words
            which he before had read.             --Fuller.
   2. To sing or repeat a tune. [Obs.] --Shak.
            Whether the birds or she recorded best. --W. Browne.
   

3. \Rec"ord\ (r[e^]k"[~e]rd), n. [OF. recort, record,
   remembrance, attestation, record. See {Record}, v. t.]
   1. A writing by which some act or event, or a number of acts
      or events, is recorded; a register; as, a record of the
      acts of the Hebrew kings; a record of the variations of
      temperature during a certain time; a family record.
   2. Especially:
      (a) An official contemporaneous writing by which the acts
          of some public body, or public officer, are recorded;
          as, a record of city ordinances; the records of the
          receiver of taxes.
      (b) An authentic official copy of a document which has
          been entered in a book, or deposited in the keeping of
          some officer designated by law.
      (c) An official contemporaneous memorandum stating the
          proceedings of a court of justice; a judicial record.
      (d) The various legal papers used in a case, together with
          memoranda of the proceedings of the court; as, it is
          not permissible to allege facts not in the record.
   3. Testimony; witness; attestation.
            John bare record, saying.             --John i. 32.
   4. That which serves to perpetuate a knowledge of acts or
      events; a monument; a memorial.
   5. That which has been, or might be, recorded; the known
      facts in the course, progress, or duration of anything, as
      in the life of a public man; as, a politician with a good
      or a bad record.
   6. That which has been publicly achieved in any kind of
      competitive sport as recorded in some authoritative
      manner, as the time made by a winning horse in a race.
   {Court of record} (pron. r?*k?rd" in Eng.), a court whose
      acts and judicial proceedings are written on parchment or
      in books for a perpetual memorial.
   {Debt of record}, a debt which appears to be due by the
      evidence of a court of record, as upon a judgment or a
      cognizance.
   {Trial by record}, a trial which is had when a matter of
      record is pleaded, and the opposite party pleads that
      there is no such record. In this case the trial is by
      inspection of the record itself, no other evidence being
      admissible. --Blackstone.
   {To beat}, or {break}, {the record} (Sporting), to surpass
      any performance of like kind as authoritatively recorded;
      as, to break the record in a walking match.
   

An ordered set of fields, usually stored contiguously. The term is used with similar meaning in several different contexts. In a file, a "record" probably has some fixed length, in contrast to a "line" which may have any length and is terminated by some End Of Line sequence). A database record is also called a "row". In a spreadsheet it is always called a "row". Some programming languages use the term to mean a type composed of fields of several other types (C calls this a "struct").

In all these cases, a record represents an entity with certain field values.

Fields may be of a fixed width (bits or characters) or they may be separated by a delimiter character, often comma (CSV) or HT (TSV).

In a database the list of values of a given field from all records is called a column.