# trace

> English word · Noun · IPA /tɹeɪs/ · frequency rank #5,277

## Definitions
1. An act of tracing.
2. An enquiry sent out for a missing article, such as a letter or an express package.
3. A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal.
4. A very small amount, often residual, of some substance or material.
5. A very small amount, often residual, of some substance or material.
6. A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board.
7. An informal road or prominent path in an arid area.
8. One of two straps, chains, or ropes of a harness, extending from the collar or breastplate to a whippletree attached to a vehicle or thing to be drawn; a tug.
9. A connecting bar or rod, pivoted at each end to the end of another piece, for transmitting motion, especially from one plane to another; specifically, such a piece in an organ stop action to transmit motion from the trundle to the lever actuating the stop slider.
10. The ground plan of a work or works.
11. The intersection of a plane of projection, or an original plane, with a coordinate plane.
12. The sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix.
13. An empty category occupying a position in the syntactic structure from which something has been moved, used to explain constructions such as wh-movement and the passive.
14. A sequence of instructions, including branches but not loops, that is executed for some input data.
15. A signifier approximated in the absence of stable signified.

## Etymology
From Middle English trace, traas, from Old French trace (“an outline, track, trace”), from the verb (see below).

## Easily confused with
- **tre** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tre)
- **true** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-true)
- **tree** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tree)
- **trap** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trap)
- **tray** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tray)
- **tram** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tram)
- **Tran** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tran)
- **trad** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trad)
- **Trav** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trav)
- **trade** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trade)
- **track** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-track)
- **train** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-train)
- **twice** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-twice)
- **truck** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-truck)
- **trick** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trick)
- **trail** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trail)
- **trash** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trash)
- **trans** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-trans)
- **tribe** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tribe)
- **Tracy** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/trace-vs-tracy)

## Common misspellings (7)
`rtace`, `tarce`, `tracce`, `traec`, `trcae`, `trrace`, `ttrace`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/trace