cursor

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun A movable indicator on a display, marking a position where typed characters will appear or where an option can be selected.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun Any part of a mathematical instrument that slides backward and forward upon another part, as the piece in an equinoctial ring-dial that slides to the day of the month, or the point that slides along a beam-compass, etc.
• noun In medieval universities, a bachelor of theology appointed to assist a master by reading to the class the text of the sentences, with explanations of the meaning, sentence by sentence. See bachelor, 2.
• noun Same as Cursorius.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun Any part of a mathematical instrument that moves or slides backward and forward upon another part.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A part of any of several scientific instruments that moves back and forth to indicate a position
• noun graphical user interface A moving icon or other representation of the position of the pointing device.
• noun graphical user interface An indicator, often a blinking line or bar, indicating where the next insertion or other edit will take place. Also referred to as "the caret".
• noun databases A reference to a row of data in a table, which moves from row to row as data is retrieved by way of it.
• noun programming A design pattern in object oriented methodology in which a collection is iterated uniformly, also known as the iterator pattern.
• verb intransitive, computing To navigate by means of the cursor keys.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun (computer science) indicator consisting of a movable spot of light (an icon) on a visual display; moving it allows the user to point to commands or screen positions