Word.ws English Dictionary

traced

/ˈtɹeɪst/

traced is the simple past and past participle of trace.

Meaning of trace

Verb

trace (third-person singular simple present traces, present participle tracing, simple past and past participle traced)

  1. (transitive) To follow the trail of.
    • I feel thy power […] to trace the ways / Of highest agents.1667, John Milton, “Book IX”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished...
  2. To follow the history of.
    • You may trace the deluge quite round the globe.1684-1690, Thomas Burnet, Sacred Theory of the Earth
  3. (transitive) To draw or sketch lightly or with care.
    • He carefully traced the outlines of the old building before him.
  4. (transitive) To copy onto a sheet of paper superimposed over the original, by drawing over its lines.
  5. (obsolete, transitive) To copy; to imitate.
    • That servile path thou nobly dost decline, / Of tracing word by word, and line by line.1647, John Denham, To Sir Richard Fanshaw
  6. (intransitive, obsolete) To walk; to go; to travel.
    • Not wont on foote with heavy armes to trace.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto III”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 29

See all 25 meanings of trace

Words formed from traced

Phrases with traced

Words that rhyme with traced

23 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about traced

What is traced the simple past and past participle of?
Traced is the simple past and past participle of trace.
How do you pronounce traced?
Traced is pronounced /ˈtɹeɪst/ (US).

Words near traced in the dictionary

  1. traceable
  2. traceableness
  3. traceably
  4. traceback
  5. tracebacks
  6. traced
  7. traced down
  8. tracee
  9. tracees
  10. traceless
  11. tracelessly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: traced (page history and authors); trace (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-traced.ogg.

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