to trace
1
7.9
- verb
- /treɪs/
:
descifrar
- Since they had to trace each letter with their fingers, reading was slow and inefficient.
- trace the words
- hard to trace
Examples
-
A budding Americanist at the time, I now have some difficulty in tracing what most engaged my imagination in this new vision of America.
Academic text (1997) -
When I found the old letters, I had to trace the faded ink to understand the message.
-
Liberty's finger traced the river's old course.
Fiction book (1993) -
Its binding was frayed, and Amir ran his pinky along the cover, tracing out the words of the title.
Fiction book (1993) -
As the teacher explained the ancient text, the students struggled to trace the letters with their pencils.
-
To decipher the handwritten note, she had to carefully trace each difficult character.
Synonyms
80
4.6
To read messy handwriting, faded text, or a code that is hard to understand
Phrasal Verbs
Compounds
- Specialized
5
4.4
A very small amount of a metal or mineral the body needs to stay healthy
- Specialized
A way to find tiny amounts of explosives on bags using a cloth and a machine
- Specialized
A device that checks for tiny amounts of explosives at security checkpoints
- Specialized
A device that finds very small amounts of chemicals in air, water or on surfaces
- Specialized
A type of fortress design with many triangular outer walls that let defenders' guns cover each other
- Specialized
A tool that shows each step a computer program takes while it runs to find errors
How Readable
Surface Forms
Etymology
Trace meaning to read faint writing comes from the word for a small mark or sign (a trace), itself from Latin trahere 'to pull'. So to trace faint handwriting is to find and make out the tiny marks left on the page.