TRACING • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... no really inherent order, but it is we who project order into the world by selecting objects and tracing relations so as to gratify our intellectual interests. We carve out order by leaving the disorderly parts out; and the world is conceived thus after the analogy of a forest or a block of marble from which parks ...

— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... tracing paper and the notes are in French. This drawing is of a simplified hull form having flat-bottom hulls with chines. It is possible that this is a tracing of a preliminary drawing obtained by Marestier or Montgery, but no documentation can be found. Its importance is that ...

— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle

... as he was in matters of general importance, was far from slow in tracing the melancholy occurrence to its ...

— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... They are mostly broad caricatures, and speak an outlandish jargon, more like Welsh than Irish, supposed to be the Ulster dialect: anything more unlike it would be difficult to conceive. The early conventional stage Irishman, tracing him from Captain. Macmorris in Henry V.,through Ben Jonson's Irish Masque and New Inn, Dekker's Bryan, Ford's Mayor of Cork, Shadwell's O'Divelly (probably Farquhar's model for Foigard), is truly a wondrous savage, chiefly distinguished by his use of the expletives 'Dear Joy!' and 'By Creesh!' ...

— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... were tracing, or pretending to trace, our route to Gouda, whither we were going, and where we expected to lunch. Hurriedly she threw herself into a discussion with him as to whether we were now in the Lek or the Maas. ...

— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

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