tracer bullet
1
7.0
- noun
- /ˈtreɪsər ˈbʊlɪt/
- Specialized
:
bala trazadora
- Tracer bullets rip into the dark bathroom, smashing the mirror, walls, and fixtures.
- fire tracer bullets
- see tracer bullets
Examples
-
The Navy boys joined in from their ships, their tracer bullets forming a "V" for victory sign in the sky.
Fiction book (1990) -
That's artillery... those are tracer bullets going off... oh...
Fiction book (1990) -
Children went up to the top floors of the tall buildings to follow the tracer bullets and see the flashes of gunfire.
Fiction book (1994) -
We watched the night sky light up as tracer bullets fired from the distant guns left bright trails behind them.
-
During the firefight, the air was filled with worrying sounds and the visible flashes of tracer bullets flying overhead.
-
As the soldiers took aim, the tracer bullets illuminated their path, making the chaos of war eerily visible.
Synonyms
8
7.2
A bullet that leaves a bright trail so you can see its path
Surface Forms
Morphology
tracer + bullet
The literal constituents ('tracer' = a projectile leaving a visible trail; 'bullet' = a small projectile) evoke a small, focused object that reveals a path, and the software sense is a metaphorical extension of that idea (a small implementation that 'shows' the system's path). Because the meaning depends on mapping a military/metaphorical image onto a technical development practice — not a straightforward compositional reading — a B1 learner knowing the words may partially infer something about tracing or testing but not fully predict the precise software usage.
Etymology
Tracer bullet comes from real bullets that leave a bright trail of light or smoke so soldiers could watch their path at night. That's why the term means a bullet that 'shows' where it is going.