Traced

How to spell traced

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce traced

What does traced mean?

1. verbFound the origin or course of something by following it step by step.
2. verbCopied a drawing or shape by following its lines on thin paper laid over it.

Traced in a sentence

• The accountant traced the missing payment to a duplicate invoice.

• The child traced the map onto a sheet of tissue paper.

• She traced her family history through old parish records.

• He traced the logo carefully before painting it on the sign.

Where does traced come from?

Language of origin: French

This is the past tense of 'trace', which English took from the Old French noun 'trace' and verb 'tracier', meaning a mark left by passing or to follow such a mark. Those French words grew out of Vulgar Latin 'tractiare', a verb formed on the Latin 'tractus', the past participle of 'trahere', which literally meant 'to drag' or 'to pull along'. The same 'trahere' root quietly sits inside many familiar English words such as 'tractor', 'attract', and 'extract', all of which carry the idea of pulling. The original sense was the physical track or footprint that something dragged behind it, and from there English extended it to following a line back to its source and to copying a drawing by following its outline. The word arrived in English in the 1300s and kept the soft French 'c', which is why the ending is spelled '-ced' rather than '-sed'.

How the word is built

• trace (from Latin tractus: a dragging, a track)
• -ed (past tense suffix)