Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use retrace in a sentence

17 example sentences · verb, noun

Retrace means to trace (a line, etc. in drawing) again. Example: “He retraced his steps, and found his keys where he had dropped them.”

Examples of retrace by meaning

verbTo go back over something, usually in an attempt at rediscovery.

  • He retraced his steps, and found his keys where he had dropped them.
  • Instead of retracing my route, I have elected to walk across Blackpool to the town's remaining large station, although even this has been greatly reduced in size.2022 November 2, Paul Bigland, “New trains, old trains, and splendid scenery”, in RAIL, number 969, page 56

More sentences with retrace

  • The six anterior teeth are "figure eighted" together as well and retraced "en masse."1997, Craven Kurz, Contemporary Lingual Orthodontics, page 83. From the entry figure eight
  • Country people in going through strange woods blaze a trail so they can retrace their steps.1954 June 17, B. C. Threadgill, “The Cat Came Back, But How Did He Do It?”, in The Birmingham News, number 82, Birmingham, Ala., column 5. From the entry felinology
  • He retraced his steps to the front gate, which he essayed to open.1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, chapter II, in The House Behind the Cedars. From the entry essay
  • Should this happen, retrace your steps to the point of separation if you wish to counteract the spell.1989, Vergilius Ture Anselm Ferm, Lightning never strikes twice (if you own a feather bed):, page 238. From the entry bread and butter
  • In between, thanks to dramatic license, Stein speaks to Toklas from beyond thee grave, and together they retrace their shared life.1986 February 15, Nicholas Deutsch, “Gertrude Stein and a Companion (review)”, in Gay Community News, volume 13, number 31, page 15. From the entry dramatic license
  • Although most cards still support screen-tweaking, you can just forget about copperbars (writing within horizontal retrace fuks up the screen BADLY) and other effex.1998, Paul-Jan Pauptit, “Raster trix are a problem nowadays.”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos (Usenet). From the entry copperbar
  • Warwick left the undertaker's shop and retraced his steps until he had passed the lawyer’s office, toward which he threw an affectionate glance.1900, Charles W. Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars. From the entry throw
  • Warwick left the undertaker's shop and retraced his steps until he had passed the lawyer's office, toward which he threw an affectionate glance.1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company…. From the entry affectionate
  • Warwick left the undertaker’s shop and retraced his steps until he had passed the lawyer’s office, toward which he threw an affectionate glance.1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, “A Stranger from South Carolina”, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.…. From the entry glance
  • In The Staircase there is a suggestion that continually retracing our steps doesn’t in itself yield much, and certainly doesn’t necessarily awaken new ways of seeing.2021, Sarah Moore, Critiquing Violent Crime in the Media, page 129. From the entry blow poke
  • The subjective impression is that of being led down a garden path until discovering at the end that we took the wrong way and have to retrace our steps.2008, David W. Carroll, “Sentence Comprehension and Memory”, in Psychology of Language, 5th edition, Belmont, Calif.: Thomson Wadsworth…. From the entry garden path sentence
  • Of course the later hardware also had the video snow thing fixed and the ROM no longer checked for vertical retrace, so the killer POKE disappeared.1999 November 9, Markus Wandel, “Blowing Processors”, in alt.folklore.computers (Usenet), message-ID <809ej1$2ip$1@bcarh8ab.ca.nortel.com>. From the entry killer poke
  • The dim, gas-lit platform there is not graced with a traffic stop, much to the annoyance of Rotherham passengers who must retrace their steps by road from Sheffield.1959 March, D. Bertram, “An old friend - the 9.7”, in Trains Illustrated, page 141. From the entry gas-lit
  • It involves the history of a general who never retraced his steps, who cared neither for mugwump murmurs nor political cabals, who took both blame and praise with equanimity.1901 May, Winston Churchill, “A Strange Meeting”, in The Crisis, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.…. From the entry mugwump
  • Not far from Artux is Kashi, the largest city in southern Xinjiang, but to retrace the route where the Silk Road left China, we did not go to Kashi first.1989, Che Muqi (车慕奇), 丝绸之路今昔 [The Silk Road, Past and Present], Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, →ISBN, →OCLC, pages 242–243. From the entry Artux

Meaning of retrace

  1. verb To trace (a line, etc. in drawing) again.
  2. verb To go back over something, usually in an attempt at rediscovery.
  3. verb To undergo retracement.

Full definition of retrace

Questions about retrace in a sentence

How do you use retrace in a sentence?
Retrace is used as a verb and noun. For example: “He retraced his steps, and found his keys where he had dropped them.”
What is a short sentence with retrace?
“He retraced his steps to the front gate, which he essayed to open.”
What does retrace mean?
Retrace means to trace (a line, etc. in drawing) again.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: retrace (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use retrace in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/retrace. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.