Other forms: traces, traced, tracing
A trace is a small sign that something was there. Not a trace, traces of blood, vanish without a trace.
In chemistry, a trace amount is one detectable but tiny, and the threshold moves as instruments improve — things once absent are now found everywhere because we can see smaller. As a verb it means to follow back, or to copy through thin paper. Note that the Old French comes from a verb meaning to drag.
1nountraceA small sign that something was there.
“The thieves escaped without leaving a trace.”
2verbfollowTo follow something back to its origin.
“The police traced the call to a phone box in the city centre.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
trace is a sign, or a following back.
Old French trace comes from tracier, to make one's way, from Latin trahere, to drag. Track and train come from related dragging.
Old French
trace — an outline, track, trace
Middle English
trace
English, today
trace
From Middle English trace, traas, from Old French trace (“an outline, track, trace”), from the verb (see below).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA