- present participle of trace.
noun
-
a copy made by tracing
-
the act of making a trace
-
a record made by an instrument
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of tracing
Middle English word dating back to 1350–1400; see origin at trace 1, -ing 1
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"These incidents have disrupted surveillance, case investigation, contact tracing, treatment and community engagements showing how attacks can undermine not only health services, but also the capacity to detect and contain outbreaks," said Musani.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Bizarrely, he insists on more contact tracing, as if oblivious to the fact that identified cases are a trivial proportion of the true pandemic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
She had issued numerous appeals for help tracing her father in the years he was missing.
From BBC ● Aug. 6, 2026
After a few blocks on Reseda, Papas turned back into the neighborhood centered around Etiwanda and started tracing loops across the blocks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
Then, with one yellow, claw-like finger, she touched the amulet at her breast, and began tracing the spiral.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
An army of people would spend a week or two searching for tiger tracks and making tracings or plaster casts of the left hind foot.
From Slate ● Apr. 28, 2026
The platform’s inputs are “imaging of any type—ECG, heart tracings, echocardiograms, blood tests, labs, genetic tests and, importantly, the electronic health record,” Dr. Mansi says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 19, 2026
I could ignore my past struggles, pretend they no longer matter, but indelible tracings remain.
From Salon ● Aug. 28, 2022
Using radiocarbon tracings, the archaeologists have dated the grave to the approximate time of the construction of Stonehenge, between 3005 and 2890 B.C.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 12, 2022
She’d been younger than Jojo at the time, but Stella remembered the furtive whispers and the tracings of fear on the grown-ups around her when it had happened.
From "Stella by Starlight" by Sharon M. Draper
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
