trace

trace n Trace, vestige, track can all mean a visible or otherwise sensible sign left by something that has passed or has taken place.

Trace basically applies to a line (as of footprints) or a rut made by someone or something that has passed

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follow the traces of a deer through the snow

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the clear trace of a sleigh

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when the hounds of spring are on winter's traces— Swinburne

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The term is often extended to suggest a mark, whether material or immaterial, that is evidence of something that has happened or has influenced a person or thing

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the child carefully removed the traces of jam from his mouth

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would tell him they had detected in the book some slight traces of a talent which . . . could be schooled to produce, in time, a publishable book— Wolfe

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the stimulation of violent emotions may leave permanent traces on the mind— Inge

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Vestige may be preferred to trace when the reference is to something that remains or still exists to give evidence of or testimony to the existence of something in the past; it often applies to remains (as a fragment, a remnant, or a relic) that constitutes a tangible or sensible reminder of what has gone before

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of this ancient custom no vestige remained— Gibbon

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the vestiges of some knowledge of Latin still appear ... in his sentences— The Nation

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some embryonic organs neither disappear nor take on permanent function, but rather persist throughout life as vestiges— Arey

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a remote outpost, with only a vestige of its former commerce in livestock—P. E. James

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Track has come to be used more often than trace in the sense of a line of perceptible marks, especially in hunting, where it also may mean the scent followed by the hounds, and in geology, where it usually means a line of fossilized footprints

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the hounds are on the track of the fox

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the track of a dinosaur

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he could just discern the marks made by the little feet on the virgin snow, and he followed their track to the furze bushes— George Eliot

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Analogous words: *sign, mark, token

trace vb *sketch, outline, diagram, delineate, draft, plot, blueprint

Analogous words: copy, duplicate, reproduce (see corresponding nouns at REPRODUCTION): map, chart, graph (see under CHART n)