"marching ants" meaning in English

See marching ants in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Etymology: From the ant-like appearance of the moving dots. Head templates: {{en-noun|p}} marching ants pl (plural only)
  1. (computing, graphical user interface) An animated dotted line indicating which portion of an image is currently selected. Tags: plural, plural-only Synonyms: marquee
    Sense id: en-marching_ants-en-noun-iGpc6-6U Categories (other): Computing, Graphical user interface, English entries with incorrect language header, English pluralia tantum, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 78 22 Disambiguation of English pluralia tantum: 75 25 Disambiguation of Pages with 1 entry: 77 23 Disambiguation of Pages with entries: 78 22 Topics: computing, engineering, graphical-user-interface, mathematics, natural-sciences, physical-sciences, sciences
  2. (motor racing) An animated map of the positions of racecars on a racetrack. Tags: plural, plural-only
    Sense id: en-marching_ants-en-noun-FDLszJK1 Categories (other): Motor racing Topics: hobbies, lifestyle, motor-racing, racing, sports
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        "An animated dotted line indicating which portion of an image is currently selected."
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        "(computing, graphical user interface) An animated dotted line indicating which portion of an image is currently selected."
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          "ref": "2023 December 21, Eric Prill, quotee, “Super Tour and Runoffs to use Flagtronics in 2024”, in Sports Car Club of America, archived from the original on 18 Oct 2025, retrieved 19 Feb 2026:",
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        "(motor racing) An animated map of the positions of racecars on a racetrack."
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  "word": "marching ants"
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Download raw JSONL data for marching ants meaning in English (2.7kB)

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (bdd14c0 and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.