Tract

How to spell tract

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tract

What does tract mean?

1. nounA large and often continuous area or expanse of land.
2. nounA system of connected organs or a passage in the body through which something passes.
3. nounA short piece of writing, usually a pamphlet on a religious or political subject.

Tract in a sentence

• The developer bought a vast tract of farmland near the motorway.

• The doctor explained how food moves through the digestive tract.

• Volunteers handed out a political tract outside the station.

• A wooded tract separates the two villages.

• A urinary tract infection can cause considerable discomfort.

• The author published a fierce tract arguing for prison reform.

Where does tract come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin tractus, meaning 'a drawing out', 'a stretch', or 'an expanse', which was the past participle of trahere, the verb meaning 'to drag' or 'to pull'. The idea of something being pulled or extended explains how the word came to describe a continuous stretch of land or an extended passage through the body. English picked it up in the fifteenth century, first for a region or expanse and later for the anatomical passages such as the digestive tract. The very same trahere root pulls its way into a large family of English words, including 'tractor', 'attract', 'extract', and 'subtract', all sharing that core sense of dragging or pulling. The separate meaning of a short religious or political pamphlet arrived through the Latin tractatus, 'a handling or treatise', which is why a tract can also be a piece of writing rather than a piece of land.

How the word is built

• tract (from Latin tractus: a drawing out, stretch, expanse)

Words that sound like tract

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• tracked: Followed the trail, movement, or progress of someone or something over time.