Word.ws English Dictionary

spoor

/spʊə/US/spʊɹ/

spoor noun: the track, trail, droppings, or scent of an animal.

Noun

spoor (usually uncountable, plural spoors)

  1. (usually) The track, trail, droppings, or scent of an animal.
    • We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird - and what animal could leave such a mark? - its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
    • Even poor Nobs appeared dejected as we quit the compound and set out upon the well-marked spoor of the abductor.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Hugo Gernsback, editor...

Verb

spoor (third-person singular simple present spoors, present participle spooring, simple past and past participle spoored)

  1. (transitive) To track (an animal) by following its spoor.

Proper noun capitalized: Spoor

Spoor (plural Spoors)

  1. An occupational surname from Middle English

spoor meaning in Tamil, Kannada and Punjabi

spoor in Tamil

மோப்பத்தடம்

spoor in Kannada

ಹೆಜ್ಜೆಗುರುತು

spoor in Punjabi

spoor, slot
ਖੁਰਾ khurā

Examples of spoor in a sentence

  • Now he has picked up the spoor of drunken vomit and there is the doll sprawled against a wall, his pants streaked with urine.1971, William S. Burroughs, The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead, page 10:
  • From the spoor, skilled trackers can deduce an individual's age, sex, physical condition, speed, and fatigue level, as well as the time of day it passed by.2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 5, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN:

Synonyms of spoor

Forms of spoor

Noun
pluralspoors
Verb
third-person singular presentspoors
present participlespooring
past participlespoored
pastspoored
Proper noun
pluralSpoors

Origin of spoor

Early 19th century, from Afrikaans spoor, from Dutch spoor (“track”). Akin to Old English and Old Norse spor (whence Danish spor), and German Spur, all from Proto-Germanic *spurą. Compare spurn.

From the Dutch and English surname, from the noun spur. From being a maker of spurs.

Words formed from spoor

Words that rhyme with spoor

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about spoor

What does spoor mean?
Spoor means the track, trail, droppings, or scent of an animal.
What is spoor in Tamil?
Spoor in Tamil is மோப்பத்தடம். See Spoor meaning in Tamil.
How do you use spoor in a sentence?
Now he has picked up the spoor of drunken vomit and there is the doll sprawled against a wall, his pants streaked with urine.
What part of speech is spoor?
Spoor can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce spoor?
Spoor is pronounced /spʊə/.
What is the plural of spoor?
The plural of spoor is spoors.

Words near spoor in the dictionary

  1. spoony
  2. spoonyism
  3. spoopier
  4. spoopiest
  5. spoopy
  6. spoor
  7. Spoore
  8. spoored
  9. spoorer
  10. spoorers
  11. Spoores

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: spoor (page history and authors); Spoor (page history and authors); spoor (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); spoor (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਖੁਰਾ (Punjabi) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-spoor.wav.

Cite this entry: “spoor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/spoor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.