💻 Recording events 🧬 Finding origins ✏️ Copying lines

tracing

2 3.8

Finding and describing where something started and how it changed

noun
/ˈtreɪsɪŋ/

: rastreo

She spent years tracing her family tree to uncover the origins of her ancestors.
tracing of genealogy
family tracing
tracing method

Now tracing its back, tracing these things back to their origins means telling a kind of story of development.

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Examples

Family reunification is central to resolving the problem of separated children, and family tracing constitutes a significant component of the efforts of local and international agencies.

Academic text (2001)
Jennifer Seninde is a tracing assistant based in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

Blog text (28)
It's tracing his family roots back to a village, going back to that village.
Now tracing its back, tracing these things back to their origins means telling a kind of story of development.

Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy
The process of family tracing began thereafter.

Academic text (2001)
For Paige, genetic tracing is the answer.

Academic text (2017)
They are self isolating and there is contact tracing going on by the UK Health Security Agency around all of these.
And OK, so tracing the ancestry of our monarchs and emperors, what do you what do you think, Debbie?
They're doing already what they call contact tracing to find out who we're hanging out with and who's infected and who's not.
Below, I will address what a demographer would call "cohort analysis"—the tracing of generations and the stories they tell over time.

Academic text (2001)

Synonyms

traceback

vstracing

7.5

A way of finding where something started, for example the source of a problem

is about discovering and describing both origin and development

Antonyms

obscuration

1 8.2

Something that stops you from seeing or understanding

Compounds

tracing paper

1 2.5

A very thin see-through paper you put over a drawing to copy it

tracing routine

Specialized

6.8

A part of a computer program that records the order of steps when it runs to help find bugs

How Thorough

deep dive

Jargon

8 4.1

investigation

∞ 2.9

tracing

2 3.8

outline

59 2.7

Surface Forms

tracing singular

tracings plural

Morphology

tracing = trace (transparent) = trace + ing

The word 'tracing' is transparently derived from 'trace' with the addition of the gerund suffix '-ing', indicating the process or act of tracing.

Etymology

Tracing comes from the Latin root tract which means 'to pull' or 'to draw', the same root you see in tractor. Think of tracing as 'drawing a line back' to follow a path and find where something started, so it means discovering the origin or development of something.