Tracing

How to spell tracing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tracing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tracing mean?

1. nounA copy of a drawing or design made by following its lines through transparent paper.
2. verbFollowing the course, origin, or development of something step by step.

Tracing in a sentence

• noun

  She made a neat tracing of the original blueprint before altering it.

• verb

  The accountant was tracing every payment back to its source.

• noun

  The architect kept a tracing of the plan in case the master copy was lost.

• verb

  She spent the weekend tracing her family history through old census records.

Where does tracing come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the verb 'trace', which English took from Old French 'tracier', meaning to make one's way or to follow a path. That French verb came in turn from the Latin 'tractus', the past participle of 'trahere', which literally meant 'to pull' or 'to drag'. The link between dragging and tracing is the idea of a line drawn out behind something as it moves, so a trace was originally a track or trail left by being pulled along. By the time English added the '-ing' ending, the sense had broadened to cover both following a faint line of evidence and copying a drawing by following its outlines through transparent paper. The same 'trahere' root quietly survives in a crowd of relatives such as 'tractor', 'attract', 'contract' and 'retract', all carrying the underlying notion of pulling.

How the word is built

• trace (from Latin trahere, to pull or drag)
• -ing (forming a gerund/present participle)