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DictionarytraceTracking a course or origin
verb / noun

trace

TRAYS/treɪs/

To follow or discover the course, origin, or outline of something.

The woman traces the river's course on the map.

Woman tracing the course of a river on a map.
Etymology
traceLatinto pull, draw

Latin “pull, draw” also produced a noun meaning “track” or “course.” This underlies tracing a course or outline, though the early development of these meanings is not entirely clear.

In context

Ancestry1:42
It also allowed us to trace her black ancestry back into the 1700s, something we can almost never do, and to reveal in the end the rarest of all finds in African-American genealogy, the document that freed her first ancestor.
How Queen Latifah Was Able To Trace Her History To the 1700s | Finding Your Roots | Ancestry® | PBS

More examples

  • We traced the river's course on a map.
  • She traces the leaf's outline with a pencil.
  • Police put a trace on the threatening call.

Forms

trace · traces · traced · tracing

tracing noun — A copy made by following existing outlines.

Similar words

track
Emphasizes following movements or progress rather than discovering an origin.
follow
Means proceeding along a route, without necessarily investigating it.
copy
Reproduces an image without necessarily following its existing lines.