trace
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Middle English trace, traas, from Old French trace (“an outline, track, trace”), from the verb (see below).
NounEdit
trace (plural traces)
- An act of tracing.
- Your cell phone company can put a trace on your line.
- An enquiry sent out for a missing article, such as a letter or an express package.
- A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal.
- A residue of some substance or material.
- There are traces of chocolate around your lips.
- A very small amount.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:modicum
- 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess[1]:
- The highway to the East Coast which ran through the borough of Ebbfield had always been a main road and even now, despite the vast garages, the pylons and the gaily painted factory glasshouses which had sprung up beside it, there still remained an occasional trace of past cultures.
- All of our chocolates may contain traces of nuts.
- (electronics) A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board.
- An informal road or prominent path in an arid area.
- 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.
- (engineering) A connecting bar or rod, pivoted at each end to the end of another piece, for transmitting motion, especially from one plane to another; specifically, such a piece in an organ stop action to transmit motion from the trundle to the lever actuating the stop slider.
- (fortification) The ground plan of a work or works.
- (geometry) The intersection of a plane of projection, or an original plane, with a coordinate plane.
- (mathematics) The sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix.
- (grammar) An empty category occupying a position in the syntactic structure from which something has been moved, used to explain constructions such as wh-movement and the passive.
- 1999, Georges Rebuschi, Laurice Tuller, The Grammar of Focus (page 290)
- [S]upposing the NP has raised in (18), the potential bindees are the clitic and the trace of the focalized NP, neither of which qualifies as a syntactic variable.
- 1999, Georges Rebuschi, Laurice Tuller, The Grammar of Focus (page 290)
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
act of tracing
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mark left as a sign of passage
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residue
very small amount
(electronics) electric current-carrying conductive pathway
|
informal road or prominent path in an arid area
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
(mathematics) sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Etymology 2Edit
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.
VerbEdit
trace (third-person singular simple present traces, present participle tracing, simple past and past participle traced)
- (transitive) To follow the trail of.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […], OCLC 228722708; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554:
- I feel thy power […] to trace the ways / Of highest agents.
- c. 1792, William Cowper, "On a Similar Occasion for the Year 1792"
- Happy the mortal, who has traced effects
To their first cause
- Happy the mortal, who has traced effects
- To follow the history of.
- 1684-1690, Thomas Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth
- You may trace the deluge quite round the globe.
- 2011 July 19, Ella Davies, “Sticks insects survive one million years without sex”, in BBC[2]:
- They traced the ancient lineages of two species to reveal the insects' lengthy history of asexual reproduction.
- 1684-1690, Thomas Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth
- (transitive) To draw or sketch lightly or with care.
- He carefully traced the outlines of the old building before him.
- (transitive) To copy onto a sheet of paper superimposed over the original, by drawing over its lines.
- (transitive, obsolete) To copy; to imitate.
- 1647, John Denham, To Sir Richard Fanshaw
- That servile path thou nobly dost decline, / Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
- 1647, John Denham, To Sir Richard Fanshaw
- (intransitive, obsolete) To walk; to go; to travel.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938, stanza 29:
- Not wont on foote with heavy armes to trace.
- (transitive, obsolete) To walk over; to pass through; to traverse.
- 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act III, scene i]:
- We do trace this alley up and down.
- (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.
Related termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
to follow the trail of
|
to follow the history of
|
to draw or sketch
|
to copy onto a sheet of superimposed paper
|
(obsolete in English) to copy; to imitate
|
AnagramsEdit
FrenchEdit
EtymologyEdit
From the verb tracer.
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
trace f (plural traces)
- trace
- track
- (mathematics) trace
Derived termsEdit
VerbEdit
trace
- inflection of tracer:
Further readingEdit
- “trace”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.
AnagramsEdit
ItalianEdit
PronunciationEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Latin thrācem, from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (Thrâix).
AdjectiveEdit
trace (plural traci)
NounEdit
trace m or f by sense (plural traci)
- (historical) Thracian (native or inhabitant of Thrace)
- Synonym: tracio
NounEdit
trace m (uncountable)
Related termsEdit
Etymology 2Edit
From Latin thraecem, from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (Thrâix).
NounEdit
trace m (plural traci)
- (historical, Ancient Rome) a gladiator bearing Thracian equipment
AnagramsEdit
Middle EnglishEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Old French trace, from tracer, tracier.
Alternative formsEdit
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
trace (plural traces) (mostly Late ME)
- A trail, track or road; a pathway or route:
- An track that isn't demarcated; an informal pathway.
- A trace; a trail of evidence left of something's presence.
- One's lifepath or decisions; one's chosen actions.
- Stepping or movement of feet, especially during dancing.
- (rare, heraldry) A straight mark.
Derived termsEdit
DescendantsEdit
ReferencesEdit
- “trāce, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-09-18.
Etymology 2Edit
VerbEdit
trace
- Alternative form of tracen
Old FrenchEdit
EtymologyEdit
From the verb tracier, tracer.
PronunciationEdit
NounEdit
trace f (oblique plural traces, nominative singular trace, nominative plural traces)
- trace (markings showing where one has been)
DescendantsEdit
PortugueseEdit
VerbEdit
trace
- inflection of traçar:
SpanishEdit
VerbEdit
trace
- inflection of trazar: