An archaic or dialectal spelling of 'chase,' meaning the act of pursuing someone or something.
From Middle English 'chace,' derived from Old French 'chacier' meaning 'to hunt.' The word evolved from Latin 'captare' (to catch), and the spelling variant 'chace' was common in Middle English before standardizing to 'chase.'
This old spelling shows how English spelling wasn't fixed until recently—dictionaries didn't standardize spellings until the 1700s, so you'd see the same word written five different ways in old documents!
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