trace

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an indication that something has been present

   there wasn't a trace of evidence for the claim

2. 2
   noun

   a just detectable amount

   They speak French with a trace of an accent.

3. 3
   verb

   pursue or chase relentlessly

   The hunters traced the deer into the woods

4. 4
   verb

   to go back over again

   we retraced the route we took last summer

5. 5
   verb

   discover bits of information about or a sequence of information

   In order to find out what happened, I started by tracing back to the beginnings of the event.

6. 6
   noun

   An act of tracing.

   Your cell phone company can put a trace on your line.

7. 7
   noun

   A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal.

   Those are the times you write it off, experience / Walk away, and leave no trace / Cause that night, love had no face

8. 8
   noun

   A very small amount, often residual, of some substance or material.

   There are traces of chocolate around your lips.

Etymology

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.