monitorial

[mon-i-tawr-ee-uhl, -tohr-]

adjective

1. of or relating to a monitor.

2. monitory.

Other Word Forms

• monitorially adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of monitorial¹

First recorded in 1715–25; monitory + -al ¹

Example Sentences

Schudson contends that monitorial citizens might even be “better informed than citizens of the past in that, somewhere in their heads, they have more bits of information.”

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Far more people will be monitorial, rather than informed, citizens––and, thanks to social media and high-volume news operations, they will be easily alarmed and distracted.

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Schudson proposes a model for citizenship that he believes to be more true to life: the “monitorial citizen”—a person who is watchful of what’s going on in politics but isn’t always fully engaged.

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“The monitorial citizen engages in environmental surveillance more than information-gathering,” he writes.

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In theory, the social-media age could make us better monitorial citizens.

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Related Words

• ominous