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spoor

US/spʊɹ/
nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,357 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: spoors

A spoor is the track and scent an animal leaves behind. Follow the spoor, fresh spoor, lose the spoor.

It covers prints, droppings, broken vegetation and smell together, which is why a tracker reads a spoor rather than a footprint. The word came into English from Afrikaans in the nineteenth century, and it is used chiefly of African game. Note that the Dutch spoor means a track.

Definitions of spoor

  1. 1nounspoorThe track and scent an animal leaves behind.C2

    “The guide knelt to examine the fresh spoor and said a lion had passed recently.”

spoor is a trail.

Where it comes from

Afrikaans spoor comes from Dutch spoor, a track. German Spur and English spur come from the same root.

  1. Dutch

    spoor — track

  2. Afrikaans

    spoor

  3. English, today

    spoor

Early 19th century, from Afrikaans spoor, from Dutch spoor (“track”). Akin to Old English - and Old Norse spor (whence Danish spor), and German Spur, all from Proto-Germanic spurą. Compare spurn.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

spoor in the wild

  • Trackers must be able to recognize and follow animals through their tracks, signs, and trails, also known as spoor.

    Tracking (hunting)

  • The tracker may attempt to predict the current location of the quarry and follow the quarry's spoor to that location, in an activity known as trailing.

    Tracking (hunting)

  • By analogy, in politics, "to look carefully on the spoor in the trails" means to investigate what is actually going on in a sensitive situation.

    Spoor (animal)

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.