Tracking

How to spell tracking

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce tracking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does tracking mean?

1. nounThe act of following the movement, progress, or location of something or someone.
2. nounThe practice of grouping pupils into classes according to their measured ability.

Tracking in a sentence

• The courier gave me a tracking number for my parcel.

• The school abolished ability tracking in favour of mixed classes.

• The fitness app does continuous tracking of my daily steps.

• Critics argue that tracking can widen the gap between strong and weak students.

Where does tracking come from?

Language of origin: French

The word grows out of 'track', which English borrowed in the late 1400s from the Old French 'trac', meaning a trail or the marks left by a passing animal or cart. The French term itself probably came from a Germanic source related to Middle Dutch 'trecken', meaning 'to pull, draw, or march along', so the earliest sense was the visible line something leaves behind as it moves. From that physical trail the meaning broadened to following or pursuing that trail, and the present participle 'tracking' came to name the activity of following a moving thing or keeping watch on its position. The modern logistics and technology senses, such as tracking a parcel or tracking a signal, are nineteenth and twentieth century extensions of that same idea of following a path. The spelling is regular: the short vowel in 'track' keeps the doubled 'ck', and adding '-ing' needs no change, so the only real care point is remembering the 'ck' rather than a single 'k'.

How the word is built

• track (a trail, mark, or path)
• -ing (forms a gerund or present participle)