Marker - Definition and Overview

Marker may refer to:

• a felt-tipped marker pen.
• a paintball marker (air gun).
• the municipality of Marker, Norway.
• a promissory note, credit slip, or IOU for (generally) a gambling debt, as in the Damon Runyon story Little Miss Marker.
• in Molecular biology a genetic marker (aka DNA marker) is used to identify a gene. A cell surface marker is an antigen characteristic of the surface of a cell or a cell type.
• a material added to an explosive to help identify its presence before detonation, or to identify its last legal owner after detonation. See taggant
• a person who marks (grades) assignments, as in a university (Generally used by Canadians, whereas Americans say "grader")
• when drinking, a marker refers to a token (usually an upside down shot glass) that purchased by another individual that allows the recipient to order another round of what he/she is drinking.

In linguistics, a marker is a morpheme that indicates some grammatical function of the marked word or sentence. In the English language, the final -s in dogs is a plural marker, for instance.

See also

• markup
• markup language