## Meanings
1. A sign that something or someone has been present.
2. A very small amount of something.
3. To find out where something came from or what happened by following the evidence.
4. To go back over something step by step.

## Examples
- There wasn't a trace of evidence to support the claim.
- There are traces of chocolate around your lips.
- Police traced the call back to a house in the city.
- We retraced the route we took last summer.

## Derived Forms
- contact-trace
- downtrace
- uptrace

## Related Forms
- tracing

## Roots and Affixes
- Root: tracen
- Root: tracer
- Root: *tractiō
- Root: trahere
- Root: treck

## 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.

## AI Etymology
Trace is 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. In present-day use, it can mean a sign that something or someone has been present, or a very small amount of something.

## Topics
- Numbers & Quantity

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