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Wiktionary

trace

See also: Trace, tracé, traçe, tracę, trące, and trącę

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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

Noun

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trace (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.
    Synonyms: track, trail
  4. A residue of some substance or material.
    There are traces of chocolate around your lips.
  5. A very small amount.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:modicum
    All of our chocolates may contain traces of nuts.
    • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
      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.
  6. (electronics) A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board.
  7. An informal road or prominent path in an arid area.
  8. 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.
  9. (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.
  10. (fortification) The ground plan of a work or works.
  11. (geometry) The intersection of a plane of projection, or an original plane, with a coordinate plane.
  13. (mathematics) The sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix.
  14. (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.
  15. (programming) A sequence of instructions, including branches but not loops, that is executed for some input data.
Derived terms
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Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Etymology 2

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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.

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To follow the trail of.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
      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
  2. 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[1]:
      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.
    • 1647, John Denham, To Sir Richard Fanshaw:
      That servile path thou nobly dost decline, / Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
  6. (intransitive, obsolete) To walk; to go; to travel.
  7. (transitive, obsolete) To walk over; to pass through; to traverse.
  8. (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.
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Translations
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Anagrams

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French

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Etymology

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From the verb tracer.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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trace f (plural traces)

  1. trace
    • 1864, Jules Verne, Voyage au centre de la Terre, sourced from [2]:
      Mais non, Axel, nous retrouverions au moins nos propres traces, et je ne vois rien...
      No, Axel, we should at least find our own traces and I see nothing--
  2. track
  3. (mathematics) trace

Derived terms

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Verb

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trace

  1. inflection of tracer:
    1. first/third-person singular present indicative/subjunctive
    2. second-person singular imperative

Further reading

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Anagrams

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Galician

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Verb

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trace

  1. inflection of trazar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Italian

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Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈtra.t͡ʃe/
  • Rhymes: -atʃe
  • Hyphenation: trà‧ce

Etymology 1

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From Latin thrācem, from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (Thrâix).

Adjective

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trace (plural traci)

  1. (literary) Thracian (of, from or relating to Thrace)

Noun

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trace m or f by sense (plural traci)

  1. (historical) Thracian (native or inhabitant of Thrace)
    Synonym: tracio

Noun

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trace m (uncountable)

  1. the Thracian language
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Etymology 2

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From Latin thraecem, from Ancient Greek Θρᾷξ (Thrâix).

Noun

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trace m (plural traci)

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

Anagrams

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Jamaican Creole

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Noun

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trace

  1. Idle talk; bullshit.
    • 2011 June, “Big Bad and Brave (Duh Weh Yuh Wah Fi Duh)”‎[3]performed by Vybz Kartel:
      Mi big bad and brave bwoy. Duh weh yuh wah fi duh. Yuh sey a your place. Duh weh yuh wah fi duh. And yuh nuh watch face. Duh weh yuh wah fi duh. It just trace yuh a trace.
      I'm big, bad and brave, boy. Do whatever you want to do to me. You say to meet you at your place to fight. Do whatever you want to do to me. Any you don't care about my reputation. Do whatever you want to do to me. It's just bullshit that you're chatting.

Verb

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trace

  1. To talk or chat idly; to bullshit.
    • 2007 January 1, “Ay Ya Ay Ya” (track 14), in Riddim Driven: Shadowz(2008)‎[4], performed by Blak Rino:
      The war him trace. Man haffi run if it a squeeze and press, yeah.
      He talks idly about war but he has to run if I squeeze and press the trigger of my gun.
    • 2011 June, “Big Bad and Brave (Duh Weh Yuh Wah Fi Duh)”‎[5]performed by Vybz Kartel:
      Mi big bad and brave bwoy. Duh weh yuh wah fi duh. Yuh sey a your place. Duh weh yuh wah fi duh. And yuh nuh watch face. Duh weh yuh wah fi duh. It just trace yuh a trace.
      I'm big, bad and brave, boy. Do whatever you want to do to me. You say to meet you at your place to fight. Do whatever you want to do to me. Any you don't care about my reputation. Do whatever you want to do to me. It's just bullshit that you're chatting.

Middle English

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Etymology 1

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From Old French trace, from tracer, tracier.

Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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trace (plural traces) (mostly Late ME)

  1. A trail, track or road; a pathway or route:
    1. An track that isn't demarcated; an informal pathway.
    2. A trace; a trail of evidence left of something's presence.
  2. One's lifepath or decisions; one's chosen actions.
  3. Stepping or movement of feet, especially during dancing.
  4. (rare, heraldry) A straight mark.
Derived terms
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Descendants
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  • English: trace
  • Scots: trace
  • Yola: threesh, treesh
References
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Etymology 2

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Verb

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trace

  1. Alternative form of tracen

Old French

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Etymology

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From the verb tracier, tracer.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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

  1. trace (markings showing where one has been)

Descendants

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Portuguese

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Verb

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trace

  1. inflection of traçar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Spanish

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Verb

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trace

  1. inflection of trazar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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