to track down
212
3.3
- phrasal verb
- /træk daʊn/
:
localizar
- The detective worked tirelessly to track down the suspect's location.
- track down the source
- track down information
- track down evidence
All the while my nurse was trying to track down my husband.
- All the while my nurse was trying to track down my husband.
- I was not able to track down prices online.
- I managed to track down the adapter cable.
- I would have spent hours tracking down the right person.
- Wonder if they, like, tried to track down whoever leaked it, you know?
- And then immediately my lawyer started trying to track down leads, whether this was true or not.
- So you, you don't have to track everything down.
- Tell me about how you track them down and what was it easy or was it hard?
- But very shortly a, a former student of Keith's tracked us down.
- If you don't let the girl go, I will track you down, I will find you, and I will kill you.
- And they used the information from DNA acquired from other individuals to track down this other individual.
Examples
-
After getting no response to emails, she tracked the editor down on Facebook asking for a phone number.
Academic text (2009) -
Too often, this meant that defendants had to try to track down their own witnesses while in jail.
Academic text (2007) -
Well, I tried to track her down.
-
Would he have been able to track me down if he had looked hard enough?
Fiction book (1996) -
All the while my nurse was trying to track down my husband.
-
I tracked her down and kept her talking until she told me what happened.
-
I tracked you down to give you my phone number, 'cause I felt we had a connection.
-
Yeah, we've been trying to track down a leak in the city.
-
I tracked down his closest relative who got his ashes.
-
The search engine www.pipl.com is amazing for tracking down people and information about them.
Academic text (2010)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
To try to find something or someone by looking carefully
533
2.7
To find the exact place of something, for example a leak or a lost city
455
3.3
To follow and find where something began
190
1.2
To look carefully for something or someone
148
3.9
Search for and find someone or something after a lot of effort
122
3.0
Look for and find a person or thing, often with effort
57
5.1
To search a place carefully to find someone or something
50
2.5
Follow someone closely to try to catch them
28
5.6
To find the source of something by checking facts
13
6.7
To search carefully to find hidden facts or documents
Find and catch someone or something after a long difficult search
To find something after a careful search
How Thorough
Surface Forms
Morphology
track + down
The verb 'track' means 'to follow' and the particle 'down' contributes a resultative/completive sense (i.e. follow until you locate), so the combined meaning 'search for and find after effort' is directly derivable from the constituents. This aligns with common English phrasal-verb composition patterns and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the individual words.
Etymology
The phrasal verb track down comes from that hunting picture: you track by following signs or clues until you reach the target, and the word down shows you have found it, so it now means 'to search for and find' someone or something after effort.