As a verb, it means to follow the path of something or to copy a drawing by going over its lines. As a noun, it means a very small amount of something or a sign that something was present.
It comes from Old French 'tracier', meaning 'to follow' or 'to make a path', from Latin 'tractus', the past participle of 'trahere' meaning 'to pull' or 'draw'.
When detectives 'trace' a call or historians 'trace' events, they’re mentally pulling on a thin line back through time. The tiny 'traces' left behind—fingerprints, crumbs, memories—are what let us reconstruct what really happened.
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