trace

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See also: Trace, tracé, and traçe

English[edit]

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Pronunciation[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

From Middle English trace, traas, borrowed from Old French trace (“an outline, track, trace”), from the verb (see below).

Noun[edit]

trace (countable and uncountable, plural traces)

  1. An act of tracing.
    Your cell phone company can put a trace on your line.
  2. An enquiry sent out for a missing article, such as a letter or an express package.
  3. A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal.
  4. A very small amount.
    • 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.
  5. (electronics) A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board.
  6. An informal road or prominent path in an arid area.
  7. 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.
  8. (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.
  9. (fortification) The ground plan of a work or works.
  10. The intersection of a plane of projection, or an original plane, with a coordinate plane.
  11. (mathematics) The sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix.
  12. (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.
Derived terms[edit]
Synonyms[edit]
Translations[edit]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

Etymology 2[edit]

From Middle English tracen, borrowed from Old French tracer, trasser (“to delineate, score, trace", also, "to follow, pursue”), probably a conflation of Vulgar Latin *tractiāre (“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.

Verb[edit]

trace (third-person singular simple present traces, present participle tracing, simple past and past participle traced)

  1. (transitive) To follow the trail of.
    • Milton
      I feel thy power […] to trace the ways / Of highest agents.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Cowper to this entry?)
  2. To follow the history of.
    • T. Burnet
      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.
  3. (transitive) To draw or sketch lightly or with care.
    He carefully traced the outlines of the old building before him.
  4. (transitive) To copy onto a sheet of paper superimposed over the original, by drawing over its lines.
  5. (transitive, obsolete) To copy; to imitate.
    • Denham
      That servile path thou nobly dost decline, / Of tracing word, and line by line.
  6. (intransitive, obsolete) To walk; to go; to travel.
    • Spenser
      Not wont on foot with heavy arms to trace.
  7. (transitive, obsolete) To walk over; to pass through; to traverse.
    • Shakespeare
      We do trace this alley up and down.
  8. (computing, transitive) To follow the execution of the program by making it to stop after every instruction, or by making it to print a message after every step.
Translations[edit]
Related terms[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From the verb tracer.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

trace f (plural traces)

  1. trace
  2. track
  3. (mathematics) trace

Verb[edit]

trace

  1. first-person singular present indicative of tracer
  2. third-person singular present indicative of tracer
  3. first-person singular present subjunctive of tracer
  4. first-person singular present subjunctive of tracer
  5. second-person singular imperative of tracer

Anagrams[edit]

Further reading[edit]

Italian[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /ˈtra.t͡ʃe/, [ˈt̪r̺äːt͡ʃe̞]
  • Stress: tràce
  • Hyphenation: tra‧ce

Etymology 1[edit]

From Latin thrācem, accusative form of thrāx, from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (Thrâix).

Adjective[edit]

trace (masculine and feminine plural traci)

  1. (literary) Thracian

Noun[edit]

trace m (plural traci)

  1. (historical) A person from or an inhabitant of Thrace.
  2. The Thracian language.
Synonyms[edit]
Related terms[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

From Latin thraecem, accusative form of thraex, from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (Thrâix).

Noun[edit]

trace m (plural traci)

  1. (historical, Ancient Rome) A gladiator bearing Thracian equipment.

Anagrams[edit]

Old French[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From the verb tracier, tracer.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

trace f (oblique plural traces, nominative singular trace, nominative plural traces)

  1. trace (markings showing where one has been)

Descendants[edit]

Spanish[edit]

Verb[edit]

trace

  1. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of trazar.
  2. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of trazar.
  3. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted?) present subjunctive form of trazar.
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