track

UK/ˈtɹæk/US/ˈtɹæk/

nounA25 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #691 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: tracks, tracking, tracked

A track is a path made for going along. The oval with painted lanes round a sports field, a muddy line through a wood, the two steel rails a train runs on.

A track is also the mark left behind by something that has passed - tyre tracks in snow, fox tracks along the riverbank. On an album, each song is a track: track four, the title track. As a verb, to track is to follow a trail or watch progress, so you track a parcel, a storm, a spending habit. Keep track of and lose track of are the everyday pair, and both take of every time. One regional note: British stations announce a platform, American stations announce a track.

Definitions of track

1nountrackA path or course laid out for running, racing or walking.A2~33%
“She ran four laps of the track before breakfast.”
2nounrailThe pair of rails a train runs along.B1~23%
“A tree had come down across the track outside Didcot.”
3nounmarkA mark left by something that has passed.B1~2%
“There were fresh tracks in the mud beside the gate.”
4nounsongOne song or recording on an album.A2~19%
“The last track on the album is only ninety seconds long.”
5verbfollowTo follow the trail or the progress of something.B1~23%
“The app tracks the delivery van street by street.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

keep track of — stay aware of where something is or how it is going
on the right track — thinking or working in a direction that will get there
off the beaten track — far from the places everyone goes

Also practised as

nounThe pair of rails a train runs along.

Where it comes from

Track came through Middle English trak from Old French trac, the trail left by horses, and where French found it is not settled. The likeliest source is Germanic: Old Norse trathk, a trodden spot, or Middle Dutch trec, a line or a row. Tread and trek belong to the same neighbourhood, which fits a word that has always meant the mark feet leave behind.

Middle Dutch
trec
Old Norse
traðk
Old French
trac — track of horses, trail, trace
Middle English
trak
English, today
track

From Middle English trak, tracke, from Old French trac (“track of horses, trail, trace”), of uncertain origin. Likely from a gem source, either Old Norse traðk "a track; path; trodden spot"; > Icelandic traðk (“a track; path; tread”), Faroese traðk (“track; tracks”), Norwegian tråkke (“to trample”) or from Middle Dutch trec, trac, treck "line, row, series"; > Dutch trek (“a draft; feature; trait; groove; expedition”), German Low German Treck (“a draught; movement; passage; flow”). See tread, trek.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sports & Fitness

Practise this word

track in the wild

A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of 1,435 mm.
Standard-gauge railway
The most prestigious global season-long leagues in the sport are the Diamond League for track and field athletes, and the World Marathon Majors in marathon running.
Sport of athletics
In a 1950 Associated Press poll, Owens was voted the greatest track and field athlete for the first half of the century.
Jesse Owens
Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner, also known as Flo-Jo, was an American track and field athlete who set world records in the 100m and 200m in 1988.
Florence Griffith Joyner
While attending California State University, Northridge (CSUN), and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she continued to compete in track and field.
Florence Griffith Joyner

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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.

Related words

the trac family

track

track — used about once every 59 pages · #691 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of track

1nountrackA path or course laid out for running, racing or walking.A2~33%

“She ran four laps of the track before breakfast.”

2nounrailThe pair of rails a train runs along.B1~23%

“A tree had come down across the track outside Didcot.”

3nounmarkA mark left by something that has passed.B1~2%

“There were fresh tracks in the mud beside the gate.”

4nounsongOne song or recording on an album.A2~19%

“The last track on the album is only ninety seconds long.”

5verbfollowTo follow the trail or the progress of something.B1~23%

“The app tracks the delivery van street by street.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 21 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.