retrace

UK/ɹiːˈtɹeɪs/<q:verb>US/ɹiːˈtɹeɪs/<q:verb>

verbC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,624 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: retraced, retracing, retraces

To retrace is to go back over the way you came. Retrace your steps, retrace the route, retrace the argument.

Retrace your steps is the standing advice for finding something lost, and it works because memory is tied to place far more than people expect. Figuratively it means going back through a chain of reasoning to find where it went wrong.

Definitions of retrace

1verbretraceTo go back over the way you came.C1
“When the fog came in, the hikers retraced the path back down the mountain.”

retrace is a going back.

Where it comes from

French retracer, from re, again, plus tracer, to trace, from Latin tractus, a drawing.

Middle French
retracier
French
retracer
English, today
retrace

From French retracer, from Middle French retracier.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

retrace in the wild

Figure-eight loop (also figure-eight on a bight, figure-eight follow-through, figure-eight retrace, Flemish loop, or Flemish eight) is a type of knot created by a loop on the bight.
Figure-eight loop
The settlement has a road from Port Stanley, but to drive to San carlos requires the traveller to retrace their steps almost all the way to Port Stanley.
Port San Carlos
In The Endless Summer II, surfers Pat O'Connell and Robert "Wingnut" Weaver retrace the steps of Mike Hynson and Robert August.
The Endless Summer II
The drop of the handle part should retrace about 30% to 50% of the rise at the end of the cup.
Cup and handle
Bullet (Bex Taylor-Klaus) assists them to retrace the victim's steps, while also hoping to find Kallie, her missing friend.
Scared and Running

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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