trace
/tɹeɪs/ noun, adjective, verb, proper noun
Forms traces tracest tracing traced
- noun An act of tracing. “Your cell phone company can put a trace on your line.”
- noun An enquiry sent out for a missing article, such as a letter or an express package.
- noun A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal.
- noun A very small amount, often residual, of some substance or material. “There are traces of chocolate around your lips.”
- noun (meteorology) A small amount of rain, not enough to be measured.
- noun (electronics) A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board.
- noun An informal road or prominent path in an arid area.
- noun One of two straps, chains, or ropes of a harness, extending from the collar or breastplate to a whippletree attached to a vehicle or thing to be drawn; a tug.
- adjective Extremely small or insignificant (of an amount or quantity).
- verb (transitive) To follow the trail of.
- verb To follow the history of.
- verb (transitive) To draw or sketch lightly or with care. “He carefully traced the outlines of the old building before him.”
- verb (transitive) To copy onto a sheet of paper superimposed over the original, by drawing over its lines.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To copy; to imitate.
- verb (intransitive, obsolete) To walk; to go; to travel.
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To walk over; to pass through; to traverse.
- verb (computing, transitive) To follow the execution of the program by making it to stop after every instruction, or by making it print a message after every step.
- proper noun (colloquial) A short form of the female given name Tracy or Tracey.
Synonyms
track trail show ace atom thought atomy aught bissel continental bit crumb glimpse dab damn dash diddly glint dot spatter hint suggestion vestige tincture shadow touch ghost tracing follow draw
Etymology
From Middle English trace, traas, from Old French trace (“an outline, track, trace”), from the verb (see below).
From Middle English tracen, from Old French tracer, trasser (“to delineate, score, trace", also, "to follow, pursue”), probably a conflation of Vulgar Latin *tractiō (“to delineate, score, trace”), from Latin trahere (“to draw”); and Old French traquer (“to chase, hunt, pursue”), from trac (“a track, trace”), from Middle Dutch treck, treke (“a drawing, draft, delineation, feature, expedition”). More at track.
Webster’s 1913
- noun One of two straps, chains, or ropes of a harness, extending from the collar or breastplate to a whiffletree attached to a vehicle or thing to be drawn; a tug.
- noun A mark left by anything passing; a track; a path; a course; a footprint; a vestige; as, the trace of a carriage or sled; the trace of a deer; a sinuous trace. Milton.
- noun A very small quantity of an element or compound in a given substance, especially when so small that the amount is not quantitatively determined in an analysis;-hence, in stating an analysis, often contracted to tr.
- verb To mark out; to draw or delineate with marks; especially, to copy, as a drawing or engraving, by following the lines and marking them on a sheet superimposed, through which they appear; as, to trace a figure or an outline; a traced drawing.
Etymology [F.trais. pl. of trait. See Trait.]
Etymology [F. trace. See Trace, v. t.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “trace”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details