different between dab vs trace

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dæb/
• Rhymes: -æb

Etymology 1

From Middle English dabben (“to strike”), perhaps ultimately imitative. Comparable with Middle Dutch dabben (“to pinch, knead, fumble, dabble”) (Dutch dabben (“(of a horse) to stamp with the forelegs”)), Dutch deppen (“to dab”), possibly German tappen (“to fumble, grope”).

The noun is from Middle English dabbe (“a strike, blow”), from the verb. Related to tap. Compare also drub, dub.

African-American sense of “playful box” perhaps influenced by dap (“fistbump”).

Verb

dab (third-person singular simple present dabs, present participle dabbing, simple past and past participle dabbed)

1. (transitive) To press lightly in a repetitive motion with a soft object without rubbing.

2. (transitive) To apply a substance in this way.

3. To strike by a thrust; to hit with a sudden blow or thrust.
   • 1532-1533, Thomas More, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer

     to dabbe him in the necke

4. (slang) To apply hash oil to a heated surface for the purpose of efficient combustion.
5. (dance, intransitive) To perform the dab dance move, by moving both arms to one side of the body parallel with your head.
   • 2019, Stormzy, Vossi Bop

     Look, my brothas don't dab, we just vossi bop

Translations

Noun

dab (plural dabs)

1. A soft tap or blow; a blow or peck from a bird's beak; an aimed blow.
2. (African-American Vernacular) A soft, playful box given in greeting or approval.

   Coordinate terms: dap, fist bump, high five

   • page 197: I step closer to Profit and draw in a deep, steadying breath while the brothers exchange dabs. “What's up, fam? I see you finally made it.”

3. A small amount, a blob of some soft or wet substance.

   Synonym: blob

   1. (slang) A small amount of hash oil.
4. (chiefly in the plural, dated, Britain) Fingerprint.
5. (dance) A hip hop dance move in which the dancer simultaneously drops the head while raising an arm, briefly resting their face in the elbow, as if sneezing into their elbow.

Related terms

• dap
• dob
• tap

Translations

Adverb

dab (not comparable)

1. With a dab, or sudden contact.

Translations

See also

• daub

Etymology 2

Perhaps corrupted from adept.

Noun

dab (plural dabs)

1. One skilful or proficient; an expert; an adept.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:skilled person

   • c. 1759-1770?, Oliver Goldsmith, Essay

     One excels at a plan or the title page, another works away at the body of the book, and the third is a dab at an index.

Derived terms

• dab hand
• dabster

Translations

Etymology 3

Late Middle English dabbe, of unknown origin; perhaps related to sense 1 (“to press against lightly”) as in "a soft mass dabbed down."

Noun

dab (plural dabs)

1. A small flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae, especially Limanda limanda; a flounder.
2. (US) A sand dab, a small flatfish of genus Citharichthys.

Translations

Etymology 4

Back slang for bad.

Adjective

dab (comparative more dab, superlative most dab)

1. (obsolete, costermongers) Bad.

   Synonym: trosseno

   Antonyms: doog, doogheno

References

Further reading

• dab on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• dab (dance) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Oxford English Dictionary (1989)
• dab at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• ABD, ADB, Abd., BDA, D.B.A., DBA, abd., bad, d/b/a, dba

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English dab.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d?p/
• Hyphenation: dab
• Rhymes: -?p

Noun

dab m (uncountable)

1. (dance) The dab (hip-hop dance move).

Related terms

• dabben

Maltese

Etymology

From Arabic ???? (??b). The expected form would be dieb, which exists dialectally. The imala was irregularly inverted as in some other verbs with -u- in the imperfect.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /da?p/

Verb

dab (imperfect jdub)

1. (intransitive) to melt (become liquid, especially through warmth)

Derived terms

• dewweb

White Hmong

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /da?/

Noun

dab

1. (evil) spirit, considered responsible for epileptic attacks among other things

Derived terms

• qaug dab peg

References

• Ernest E. Heimbach, White Hmong - English Dictionary (1979, SEAP Publications)

Yola

Alternative forms

• dap

Etymology

From Middle English dabben.

Verb

dab

1. dash, slap

References

• Jacob Poole (1867) , William Barnes, editor, A glossary, with some pieces of verse, of the old dialect of the English colony in the baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, J. Russell Smith, ?ISBN

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?e?s/, [t??e?s]
• Rhymes: -e?s

Etymology 1

From Middle English trace, traas, from Old French trace (“an outline, track, trace”), from the verb (see below).

Noun

trace (countable and uncountable, plural traces)

1. An act of tracing.

2. An enquiry sent out for a missing article, such as a letter or an express package.
3. A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal.
4. A residue of some substance or material.

5. A very small amount.

6. (electronics) A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board.
7. An informal road or prominent path in an arid area.
8. One of two straps, chains, or ropes of a harness, extending from the collar or breastplate to a whippletree attached to a vehicle or thing to be drawn; a tug.
9. (engineering) A connecting bar or rod, pivoted at each end to the end of another piece, for transmitting motion, especially from one plane to another; specifically, such a piece in an organ stop action to transmit motion from the trundle to the lever actuating the stop slider.
10. (fortification) The ground plan of a work or works.
11. (geometry) The intersection of a plane of projection, or an original plane, with a coordinate plane.
13. (mathematics) The sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix.
14. (grammar) An empty category occupying a position in the syntactic structure from which something has been moved, used to explain constructions such as wh-movement and the passive.

Synonyms

• (mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal): track, trail
• (small amount): see also Thesaurus:modicum.

Derived terms

• downtrace, uptrace
• without trace, without a trace

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English tracen, from Old French tracer, trasser (“to delineate, score, trace", also, "to follow, pursue”), probably a conflation of Vulgar Latin *tracti? (“to delineate, score, trace”), from Latin trahere (“to draw”); and Old French traquer (“to chase, hunt, pursue”), from trac (“a track, trace”), from Middle Dutch treck, treke (“a drawing, draft, delineation, feature, expedition”). More at track.

Verb

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

1. (transitive) To follow the trail of.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Cowper to this entry?)

2. To follow the history of.
   • 1684, Thomas Burnet, The Sacred Theory of the Earth

     You may trace the deluge quite round the globe.
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. (transitive, obsolete) To copy; to imitate.
   • 1647, John Denham, To Sir Richard Fanshaw

     That servile path thou nobly dost decline, / Of tracing word by word, and line by line.

6. (intransitive, obsolete) To walk; to go; to travel.
7. (transitive, obsolete) To walk over; to pass through; to traverse.
8. (computing, transitive) To follow the execution of the program by making it to stop after every instruction, or by making it print a message after every step.

Related terms

• tracing

Translations

Anagrams

• Carte, acter, caret, carte, cater, crate, creat, react, recta, reäct

French

Etymology

From the verb tracer.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /t?as/
• Rhymes: -as

Noun

trace f (plural traces)

1. trace
2. track
3. (mathematics) trace

Derived terms

• trace de freinage

Verb

trace

1. first-person singular present indicative of tracer
2. third-person singular present indicative of tracer
3. first-person singular present subjunctive of tracer
4. third-person singular present subjunctive of tracer
5. second-person singular imperative of tracer

Further reading

• “trace” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Anagrams

• caret, carte, créât, écart, terça

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?tra.t??e/
• Hyphenation: trà?ce

Etymology 1

From Latin thr?cem, accusative form of thr?x, from Ancient Greek ???? (Thrâix).

Adjective

trace (plural traci)

1. (literary) Thracian

Noun

trace m (plural traci)

1. (historical) A person from or an inhabitant of Thrace.

   Synonym: tracio

trace m (uncountable)

1. The Thracian language.

Related terms

• tracio
• Tracia

Etymology 2

From Latin thraecem, accusative form of thraex, from Ancient Greek ???? (Thrâix).

Noun

trace m (plural traci)

1. (historical, Ancient Rome) A gladiator bearing Thracian equipment.

Anagrams

• carte, certa, cetra

Middle English

Etymology 1

From Old French trace, from tracer, tracier.

Alternative forms

• traas, trase

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?tra?s(?)/

Noun

trace (plural traces) (mostly Late ME)

1. A trail, track or road; a pathway or route:
   1. An track that isn't demarcated; an informal pathway.
   2. A trace; a trail of evidence left of something's presence.
2. One's lifepath or decisions; one's chosen actions.
3. Stepping or movement of feet, especially during dancing.
4. (rare, heraldry) A straight mark.

Derived terms

• tracen
• tracyng

Descendants

• English: trace
• Scots: trace

References

• “tr?ce, n.(1).”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-09-18.

Etymology 2

Verb

trace

1. Alternative form of tracen

Old French

Etymology

From the verb tracier, tracer.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?tra.t?s?/

Noun

trace f (oblique plural traces, nominative singular trace, nominative plural traces)

1. trace (markings showing where one has been)

Descendants

• ? Middle English: trace
  • English: trace
• French: trace

Spanish

Verb

trace

1. First-person singular (yo) present subjunctive form of trazar.
2. Formal second-person singular (usted) present subjunctive form of trazar.
3. Third-person singular (él, ella, also used with usted^?) present subjunctive form of trazar.