trace
Pluraltraces
Pluraltraces
- 1A mark left behind as a sign that a person or animal has passed by.
Detectives searched the room but found no trace of the intruder.
Faint traces of ancient footpaths still cross the moorland.
Note
The sign that someone has passed is most at home in the negative: no trace, without a trace, leave no trace. An Ashford & Simpson lyric of 1983 shows how readily it turns figurative, describing a person who departs and leaves nothing behind. Track and trail suggest a line one can follow. A trace may be a single mark, which is why it suits vanishing.
- 2A very small amount, often left over, of some substance or material.
Lab tests revealed a trace of lead in the paint sample.
Only traces of the original perfume lingered in the empty bottle.
Similarbit, hint, dash, drop, grain
Note
Food labels have made the plural familiar: "may contain traces of nuts" warns of residue, not of an ingredient. The noun takes of and a substance, as in traces of chocolate or a trace of lead. When the idea moves in front of a noun, it becomes the adjective, as in trace amounts. Taylor Swift's "gone was any trace of you" carries it from a substance to a person's lingering presence.
- 3Present in an extremely small or insignificant amount or quantity.
The blood test showed trace amounts of the drug.
Even trace quantities of the allergen can trigger a reaction.
Similarminute, tiny, minuscule, negligible
Oppositesubstantial, significant, large
- 4To copy a design onto an overlaid sheet of paper by drawing over the lines of the original.
The student traced the diagram before coloring it in.
Children often trace shapes to practice drawing.
Similarcopy
- 5To follow the trail or path left by a person, animal, or thing.
Investigators traced the suspect to a remote cabin.
Trackers can trace an animal by its prints and droppings.
Similartrack, trail, follow, locate
Note
The verb's double life starts in Old French tracer, which meant both "to delineate, score" and "to follow, pursue". It probably goes back to Latin trahere, "to draw". That is why English trace both follows a trail and draws a line. It often takes to: Cowper writes of one who "has traced effects / To their first cause", and Milton of tracing "the ways / Of highest agents."
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- 7
- 8An instance or act of tracing something.
The detective's careful trace of the call led to an address.
A single trace of the pattern was enough for the seamstress.
Note
Telephone and police work give the act its usual collocation: you put a trace on a line, a call, or an account. The noun names the whole procedure. The verb of following a trail names what the investigator does, so a trace is set up and runs, while a person traces.
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- 10A small amount of rain, too little to be measured.
Weather stations recorded only a trace of rain during the dry spell.
A trace of drizzle dampened the streets but added nothing to the totals.
Similardrop, bit, dash, spatter
Note
Weather records need a word for rain that falls but cannot be counted. A station logs a trace rather than a figure. It is the general "small residue" meaning applied to a rain gauge, so a trace of rain is something seen or felt, never measured. In reports it usually appears as "only a trace" or "a trace of rain", set against measurable totals.
- 11A conductive pathway on a printed circuit board that carries electric current.
The engineer rerouted a trace to avoid the overheating component.
Each trace on the board carries signals between the chips.
Similartrack
Note
Electronics uses the word for the thin lines on a circuit board. Each trace is a conductive path, typically of etched copper, joining one component to another. Engineers speak of routing a trace, and its width and thickness set how much current it can carry and how much it resists. Unlike a wire, a trace is part of the board itself.
- 12A sequence of instructions, including branches but not loops, that runs for a given set of input data.
The profiler captured a trace for each test input.
Engineers compared two traces to find where the logic diverged.
Note
In program analysis, the word means one path actually taken through the code: the instructions run for a particular input, with branches included and loops excluded. A profiler captures traces, and comparing two of them shows where execution diverged. The noun pairs with the debugging verb, which describes following a program step by step as it runs.
- 13To follow a program's execution by halting it after each instruction or having it print a message at every step.
Developers trace the application to watch how each instruction changes the stored values.
To debug the crash, the engineers trace the routine instruction by instruction.
Note
Debugging gives the verb its working sense. A developer traces a program or a routine to watch each step as it happens, either halting after every instruction or having the code print a message as it goes. The resulting record is itself called a trace, the noun used in program analysis.
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- 15An empty grammatical position marking the spot from which a word has been moved, used to explain structures like wh-questions and the passive.
In the analysis, a trace marks the original object position after the noun moves to the front.
The passive sentence leaves a trace where the subject originally appeared.
Note
Generative syntax uses the word for the gap a moved phrase leaves behind. In "What did you see?", a trace sits after see, where what started. It is coindexed with the element that moved. Georges Rebuschi and Laurice Tuller's The Grammar of Focus (1999) speaks of "the trace of the focalized NP". Joseph Aoun sets it apart from PRO, another silent element whose antecedent has its own role.
- 16The number obtained by adding together the elements on the main diagonal of a square matrix.
The trace of a matrix equals the sum of its eigenvalues.
She computed the trace by adding the three diagonal entries.
Note
Linear algebra's trace is a single number read off a square matrix, and its value lies in what it ignores. It stays the same under a change of basis, which is why it equals the sum of the eigenvalues. Mathematicians write it tr(A) and speak of the trace of a matrix or an operator. It is defined only for square matrices.
- 17The line formed where a plane of projection or a given plane meets a coordinate plane.
The plane's trace on the floor of the coordinate system was a single straight line.
Engineers sketched the trace where the cutting plane intersected the horizontal axis plane.
Note
Descriptive geometry represents a plane by where it cuts the reference planes, and each of those lines of intersection is a trace. A plane in space can thus be drawn as straight lines on the coordinate planes. The word fits the noun's older sense of an outline: the trace is the mark one plane leaves on another.
- 18Either of the two straps, chains, or ropes that run from a draft animal's harness to the vehicle or load being pulled.
A worn trace broke under the strain as the team hauled the loaded wagon uphill.
He buckled each trace from the collar to the whippletree before setting off.
- 19The ground plan or outline of a fortification as laid out on the site.
The defending engineers staked out the trace of the new bastion before construction began.
A star-shaped trace allowed the fort's guns to cover every approach.
Note
Military engineers use the word for a fortification's footprint: the outline of its ramparts and bastions as marked on the ground before anything is built. A star-shaped or angled trace was chosen for the fields of fire it gave defenders, so the word carries strategy as well as geometry. It is the noun's old sense of "an outline", applied to earthworks.
- 20A connecting bar or rod pivoted at each end to another piece, used to transmit motion from one part to another, especially between different planes.
Inside the mechanism, a slender trace carried the motion from the wheel to the sliding bar.
Each trace pivoted freely at both ends so it could pass movement around a corner.
Note
This mechanical link has a specialist home in the pipe organ. In a stop action, the trace carries motion from the trundle to the lever that moves the stop slider. More generally, it is any rod pinned at both ends to other parts. It is valued for passing motion around a corner, from one plane to another, where a straight push would not reach.
- 21To reproduce something by copying it, or to imitate another's work or manner.
That servile path thou nobly dost decline, / Of tracing word by word, and line by line.
1647, John Denham, To Sir Richard FanshawNote
This obsolete use meant copying a model closely, especially a text. John Denham's To Sir Richard Fanshaw (1647) praises the translator for declining the "servile path" of "tracing word by word, and line by line". The word could therefore carry a faint reproach: tracing was the slavish copyist's method. In modern writing, copy or imitate does the job.
- 22To walk over, pass through, or travel across a place or region.
Weary soldiers must trace the marshland on foot before reaching camp.
We do trace this alley up and down.
1598, William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”Note
Here the ground walked is the direct object. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing has "We do trace this alley up and down", meaning to pace a garden walk back and forth. The construction works like traverse. It is obsolete, so a modern writer would use walk, pace or cross instead.
- 23To walk, go, or travel from place to place.
At dawn the shepherds trace across the open moor.
Not wont on foote with heavy armes to trace.
1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie QueeneNote
Once intransitive, the verb simply meant going on foot, with no object and no trail in view. Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1596) has "Not wont on foote with heavy armes to trace." The use is obsolete and is met only in older poetry. Compare the "walk over" sense, which adds the ground covered as an object.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English trace or traas, borrowed from Old French trace meaning 'an outline, track, trace', which came from the verb form.
From Middle English tracen, from Old French tracer or trasser ('to delineate, trace', also 'to follow, pursue'). This was probably a blend of Vulgar Latin *tractiō ('to trace'), from Latin trahere ('to draw'), and Old French traquer ('to chase, hunt'), from trac ('a track'), from Middle Dutch treck ('a drawing, draft, feature').