TRACING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Tracing

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/trˈeɪsɪŋ/ Listen

noun

Tracing n.

The act of one who traces; especially, the act of copying by marking on thin paper, or other transparent substance, the lines of a pattern placed beneath; also, the copy thus producted.

A regular path or track; a course.

Tracing cloth, Tracing paper, specially prepared transparent cloth or paper, which enables a drawing or print to be clearly seen through it, and so allows the use of a pen or pencil to produce a facsimile by following the lines of the original placed beneath.

verb

Trace v. t. (past & past part. traced; pres. part. tracing)

To mark out; to draw or delineate with marks; especially, to copy, as a drawing or engraving, by following the lines and marking them on a sheet superimposed, through which they appear; as, to trace a figure or an outline; a traced drawing. "Some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly lading into the twilight of the woods."

To follow by some mark that has been left by a person or thing which has preceded; to follow by footsteps, tracks, or tokens. "You may trace the deluge quite round the globe." "I feel thy power... to trace the ways Of highest agents."

Hence, to follow the trace or track of. "How all the way the prince on footpace traced."

To copy; to imitate. "That servile path thou nobly dost decline, Of tracing word, and line by line."

To walk over; to pass through; to traverse. "We do tracethis alley up and down."

Trace v. i. To walk; to go; to travel. (Obs.) "Not wont on foot with heavy arms to trace."

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Etymology of 'Tracing'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tracing" Quotes from Famous Books

... superficial observation of man, but many of them remain inexhaustible funds of successive discovery, perhaps as long as the continued existence of man upon earth. What an unknown world of mind, for example, is yet teeming in the womb of time, to be revealed in tracing the causes of the sympathy between the magnet and the pole—that unseen, immaterial spirit, which walks with us through the most entangled forests, over the most interminable wilderness, and across every ...

— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... necessary, and more particularly so during the progress of a revolution, and until right ideas confirm themselves by habit, that we frequently refresh our patriotism by reference to first principles. It is by tracing things to their origin that we learn to understand them: and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view that ...

— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... prows and gaudy paint common among Pacific tribes, escorted Vancouver's boats northward the second week in June through the labyrinthine passageways of cypress-grown islets to Burrard Inlet. To Peter Puget was assigned the work of coasting the mainland side and tracing every inlet to its head waters. Johnstone went ahead in a small boat to reconnoitre the way out of the Pacific. On both sides the shores now rose in beetling precipice and steep mountains, down which foamed cataracts setting the echo of myriad ...

— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... impossibility of tracing the history of the Hebrew language must be added its particular nature and composition: these give rise to so many ambiguities that it is impossible to find a method which would enable us to gain a certain knowledge of all the statements in Scripture, [Endnote 7]. (94) In addition to ...

— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... the north side of the lake opposite our camp we found an old blaze and a trail leading from it along a ridge and through marshes to a small lake. This was the only trail that we could find anywhere, so we decided to follow it, though it did not bear all the earmarks of the portage trail we had been tracing—it was decidedly more ancient. We started our work with a will. It was a hard portage and we sometimes sank knee deep into the marsh and got mired frequently, but finally ...

— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

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