tracier

Forms

tracier (verb)^[1]

• trachier, tracer, traser, trasser, traicier, traichier^[2][3]
• tracir, tracher, trazer^[4]

The northern spelling with ch is in Godefroy's and the DMF's quotations (trachier, trachié).^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Vulgar Latin *tractiō (“to draw a line; to follow a track”),^[5][6][7][8] derived from tractus (“a drawing, a track”), from the supine of trahō (“to draw, drag”).^[5][7] Bloch and Wartburg and the TLFi infer from the earliest French uses that the Latin verb must have meant either "to follow a track" or "to make a track".^[6][5] The FEW and the DEAF file the word under the same etymon.^[9][10]

The same Latin verb gave Italian tracciare (“to track; to sketch”), Spanish trazar and Portuguese traçar.^[8][5][11] French Wiktionary instead links it with Latin tractō (“to drag”).^[12]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is an Anglo-Norman one: the AND's earliest citation belongs to the first half of the 12th century.^[4] The TLFi's first record is the Oxford Psalter, an Anglo-Norman prose psalter that the DEAF bibliography dates to the middle of the century, where the verb means to try to follow someone's track.^[5][13] The DHLF dates the first tracier to about 1120.^[7]

Semantic evolution

In Old French the verb is above all a hunting word: in Chrétien's Cligès a hawk or hound la quaille et la perdriz trace "tracks the quail and the partridge", and in Yvain a damsel who has followed the knight's trail says Mout l'ai bien seü et tracié "I have followed and tracked him well".^[14] From tracking it widened to searching, seeking and pursuing, and to roaming and travelling through a country.^[2][7][6] A second line of senses, drawing a stroke through something to cancel it, is recorded from 1439.^[5][7]

The modern sense of drawing lines and outlines took over only in the 16th century.^[6][5] The older sense of following a track lived on in the language of hunting and in many dialects, and the Norman and Picard forms still mean "to search".^[7][8] The modern word is French tracer.^[5]

Timeline

• 1100–1150 – the AND's first citation, in an Anglo-Norman text.^[4]
• 1140–1160 – "to follow a track" in the Oxford Psalter.^[5][13]
• c. 1165 – tracier in Narcisus.^[15]
• c. 1176 – "to track game" in Chrétien de Troyes's Cligès.^[14][5]
• c. 1177 – tracent and tracié in Chrétien's Yvain.^[16][14]
• c. 1275 – trace in the second part of the Roman de la Rose.^[17]
• 1439 – "to strike out" a written entry.^[5]
• 1552 – the modern sense, to mark out a way or to set down in writing.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. to track, trail (game).^[14][4]
2. to search out, seek; to pursue, follow in someone's footsteps.^[4][2]
3. to roam, travel about a country.^[18][7]
4. to draw a line through, strike out.^[2][5]
5. to guide.^[18][12]

Noun

1. (the infinitive as a noun) search, tracking.^[18][4]

Anglo-Norman

The AND heads the verb tracer, with the spellings tracir, tracher, traser and trazer, and first cites it from the first half of the 12th century.^[4] Its insular senses are to track and trail, to search out, to follow in someone's footsteps, and to seek a way or plot to do something.^[4] Middle English took it in the late 14th century as tracen, "to follow a course; to draw an outline", the source of the English verb trace.^[19][20]

Word family

• trace

Descendants

• Middle French tracer (→ French tracer)^[3][5]
• Norman trachier^[21]
• Middle English tracen (borrowed; → English trace)^[19][20]

Usage notes

Tobler–Lommatzsch, Godefroy and the DÉCT head the word tracier,^[1][14] the AND tracer,^[4] and the DMF tracer.^[3] The AND's second tracer, "the traces of a harness", is a noun first cited in the early 15th century.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 10:487
2. ^ a b c d e Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon, p. 7:782
3. ^ a b c d Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf, p. s.v. tracer
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–), p. s.v. tracer
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
6. ^ a b c d Bloch, Oscar; Wartburg, Walther von (1989), Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 8th ed., Paris: Presses universitaires de France, p. 682
7. ^ a b c d e f g Rey, Alain, ed. (1992), Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Paris: Le Robert, p. s.v. tracer
8. ^ a b c Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 8895
9. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 13/2:143
10. ^ Baldinger, Kurt; Möhren, Frankwalt; Städtler, Thomas, eds. (1971–2021), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF), Heidelberg: Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften; DEAFél / DEAFpré, deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de, p. s.v. tracier
11. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh, p. 9647
12. ^ a b Wiktionnaire (French Wiktionary), fr.wiktionary.org
13. ^ a b Möhren, Frankwalt, Dictionnaire étymologique de l'ancien français (DEAF): Complément bibliographique, electronic version (DEAFBiblEl), Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, alma.hadw-bw.de/deafbibl (texts by siglum, with their dates), p. PsOxfM
14. ^ a b c d e Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes (DÉCT), LFA / Université d'Ottawa – ATILF, CNRS / Université de Lorraine (2014), p. s.v. tracier
15. ^ Stein, Achim; Kunstmann, Pierre; Gleßgen, Martin-D., eds., Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam, version 4 (lemmatised corpus of Old French texts, after A. Dees), Universität Stuttgart, github.com/michaniets/NCA (texts by DEAF siglum), p. NarcisusP_B
16. ^ UD Old French PROFITEROLE and UD Middle French PROFITEROLE treebanks, Universal Dependencies (from the SRCMF and the Base de français médiéval; texts by DEAF siglum), p. YvainF
17. ^ Rainsford, Thomas, CorMétAF: lemmatised extracts of Old and Middle French verse and prose (990–1500), github (texts by siglum), p. RoseMLec
18. ^ a b c Godefroy, Frédéric (1901), Lexique de l'ancien français, ed. J. Bonnard and A. Salmon, Paris / Leipzig: Welter, p. s.v. tracier
19. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
20. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
21. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org