Register is a term used in many different ways, but it usually refers to an official list of something. This could mean a list of students who have registered for classes at the beginning of the semester, or a list of shareholders who own stock in a publicly-traded company. It could also refer to the range of sound that a person’s voice can make or the thing that the checkout lady uses to ring up your groceries. As a verb, register can mean to mark something down officially or sign up, or it can mean to show emotion, like when someone huffs in exasperation during a debate or grins while signing “hello.” The word is also used to describe the style of language that a person uses: A formal speaker may use more prescriptive rules about grammar and syntax than a casual one, and will likely avoid words that are considered nonstandard, such as ain’t or y’all.
The computer processor has a set of high-speed memory storing units called registers. These store data and instructions for processing that the CPU needs to access and manipulate quickly.
These registers are numbered depending on the type of instruction the CPU is working with, and can include things such as an instruction counter, an address register, a control unit work stack, a base register, an expression register, a general purpose register, and others. When a CPU executes an instruction, the information for that operation is fetched from main memory into these registers, where it is stored until it can be sent to an output device.
In the case of a payroll register, the information for each pay period is recorded in the company’s employee records and the information is later printed out for payment to employees. When the payroll register is printed, it can also contain a total of all deductions and taxes taken from each paycheck.
A register can be a formal or informal listing of information, and can be written or electronic. It can be used in any number of fields, such as for class lists, voter rolls, or the record of all charges to a credit card account. It can be a tool to help organize information for later use, or an instrument that provides an indication of the state of an object.