trace

English

/tɹeɪs/

noun
Definitions
  • An act of tracing.
  • 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.
  • A very small amount.
  • (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.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English trace borrowed from Old French trace (trace, an outline, track).

Origin

Old French

trace

Gloss

trace, an outline, track

Timeline

Distribution of cognates by language

Geogrpahic distribution of cognates

Cognates and derived terms