- 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:
“There was about seven decades of work that had to happen,” he said, tracing the origins to the late 1940s and early 1950s and studies on the statistics of language.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
Iranian economic journalist Ata Hosseinian echoed the warning days later, tracing the fuel shortages and long gas-station lines directly to the blockade.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 18, 2026
"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
By tracing the origins of enzymes during the earliest split between bacteria and archaea, the researchers found evidence that free-living cells may have originated independently twice.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 12, 2026
Babulya was awake and tracing her withered fingers along the plants in the kitchen when Anya opened the door and walked in.
From Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack
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
Under the glass surface on his desk, Manger keeps sketched tracings of the names of officers who died in the line of duty under his command.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 30, 2019
A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
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.
