Word.ws English Dictionary

tracery

/ˈtɹeɪsəɹi/

tracery noun: bars or ribs, usually of stone or wood, or other material, that subdivide an opening or stand in relief against a door or wall as an ornamental feature.

tracery: bars or ribs, usually of stone or wood, or other material, that subdivide an opening or stand in...
Image: Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tracery (plural traceries)

  1. Bars or ribs, usually of stone or wood, or other material, that subdivide an opening or stand in relief against a door or wall as an ornamental feature.
    • Because of the flamelike undulations of its window tracery, the Norman archæologist, M. de Caumont, who had brought into use the name Romanesque, invented the equally useful term Flamboyant.1921, Elizabeth Boyle O'Reilly, How France Built Her Cathedrals, Harper & Brothers, page 140
  2. (broadly) A delicate interlacing of lines reminiscent of the architectural ornament.
    • He is homesick for the hale rough weather; for the tracery of the frost upon his window-panes at morning, the reluctant descent of the first flakes, and the white roofs relieved against the sombre sky.1874, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Ordered South”, in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], published 1881, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    filigree

Synonyms of tracery

Forms of tracery

pluraltraceries

Origin of tracery

From trace + -ery.

Words formed from tracery

Questions about tracery

What does tracery mean?
Tracery means bars or ribs, usually of stone or wood, or other material, that subdivide an opening or stand in relief against a door or wall as an ornamental feature.
What part of speech is tracery?
Tracery is a noun.
How do you pronounce tracery?
Tracery is pronounced /ˈtɹeɪsəɹi/.
What is the plural of tracery?
The plural of tracery is traceries.

Words near tracery in the dictionary

  1. traceroute
  2. tracerouted
  3. traceroutes
  4. tracerouting
  5. tracers
  6. tracery
  7. traces
  8. traces down
  9. traces italiennes
  10. tracest
  11. traceth

Source and license

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