trail
/treɪl
/- The place where the terrorists executed the men on the first day is still marked by trails of dry blood.
- Seth grew absolutely still as she stomped off, blood marking her trail in tiny drops.
- On the doorknob was a bloody hand print, there was also a trail of drag marks lagging behind it.
Synonyms
- In a drag hunt, a field master leads a team on horseback, guided by foxhounds on the trail of an animal scent.
- Alexander does it on foot, following meandering game trails and tracking the animals.
- They were always scavenging for the latest hint of gossip as if they were ravenous animals on the trail of a wounded deer.
Synonyms
- As the fires and pumps began to burn off the remaining water within him, a thin trail of smoke exited his nostrils.
- And he was sure that he was just starting to see the thin trails of smoke from his community's cook-fires.
- The cigarette dangled from the corner of her red-smudged lips, its burnt and ashy tip sending up thin trails of smoke into the already stuffy air.
Synonyms
- This may be enough for some, but if you wish to capture hidden aspects of the place you will be visiting you might want to get off the beaten trail.
- There was no road here, only a trail of beaten earth, and his horse's hooves fell with a dull, muffled sound.
- The cross-country ski trails are just that - with virtually no warming lodges, ski lessons, or rental equipment.
Synonyms
- With him will be the Vietnam veterans, the rock stars and the celebrities who have followed the campaign trail for months.
- Even when unashamedly following the tourist trail, though, it is often better to take the more adventurous options.
- He followed him on the campaign trail earlier this year also.
- Getting out onto a well-lit ski trail is one of the most pleasurable additions to cross-country skiing in recent years.
- It doubles as a cross-country ski trail in the winter.
- Less far-reaching but no less grand, in 1982 two men with a love of Nordic skiing and a good bottle of wine hit upon the self-evident truth that Vermont needed a state-wide ski trail.
- It will feature on-air trails on television and radio and, for the first time, an off-air poster campaign.
- Strikingly, the television trails feature no voices and the thoughts of individuals reacting to scenes around them are represented by words on screen.
- The campaign will also appear - in Arabic and English - on major and specialised online sites, and on Arabic radio trails across the Arab world.
- Obviously harassed, the young woman walked off, the man still talking in the same vein, trailing along behind her.
- I sighed as Pitcher waddled along, trailing slightly behind the others sometimes rushing to catch them up.
- Alternately, it doesn't hurt to find someone smoking tea-leaves and trail along behind them.
Synonyms
- I sailed on towards Wellington Harbour 70 miles away, saved only by the branches of a willow tree trailing mercifully within arm's reach.
- Supported plants are also easier to protect from pests than plants trailing on the ground.
- Vines trailing overhead and pot plants against the whitewashed walls add a Mediterranean feel.
Synonyms
- Donnie promptly looked at Steven, and then began moving up the stairs with Steven trailing wearily behind.
- He rose to his feet, slowly trailing behind the stern headmaster.
- Kevin said goodbye to Samantha and walked off trailing behind Martin.
Synonyms
- He felt the magic start to fade and the voices trailed off.
- Her voice trailed off as she disappeared around the corner, headed for the children's bedrooms.
- ‘My God, it could happen to any of us,’ and her voice trailed off.
Synonyms
- Basically day-time hunters, their prey is trailed by scent and pursued at sight with no violent outburst of speed, but in a steady tireless canter, which finally outruns the quarry.
- In the end she had no choice but have them follow her because they trailed her.
- Kate was drawn magnetically to follow, and trailed him through the door into the dark hallway.
Synonyms
- But it shouldn't mask the fact that when he was on a football pitch he was the supremo, the quick-footed star of the game who had tricks and skills to burn and opponents trailing in his slipstream.
- They have been beatable in every game, trailing in the fourth quarter at home against Golden State and Washington.
- It came down to the end of the game and we were trailing by one point.
Synonyms
- For some strange reason the film was originally trailed as a sort of ‘teen slasher flick’ on US TV.
- The programme had been trailed on screen for many weeks beforehand, leading many newspaper critics to accuse the broadcaster of ‘hype’.
- Their six months of filming was distilled into a one hour programme trailed as ‘a damning catalogue of inefficiency, neglect and substandard treatment.’
Synonyms
Phrases
at the trail
trail arms
trail one's coat
Origin
Middle English (as a verb): from Old French traillier 'to tow', or Middle Low German treilen 'haul a boat', based on Latin tragula 'dragnet', from trahere 'to pull'. Compare with trawl. The noun originally denoted the train of a robe, later generalized to denote something trailing.
train from Middle English:
Before railways were invented in the early 19th century, train followed a different track. Early senses included ‘a trailing part of a robe’ and ‘a retinue’, which gave rise to ‘a line of travelling people or vehicles’, and later ‘a connected series of things’, as in train of thought. To train could mean ‘to cause a plant to grow in a desired shape’, which was the basis of the sense ‘to instruct’. The word is from Latin trahere ‘to pull, draw’, and so is related to word such as trace (Middle English) originally a path someone is drawn along, trail (Middle English) originally in the sense ‘to tow’, tractor (late 18th century) ‘something that pulls', contract (Middle English) ‘draw together’, and extract (Late Middle English) ‘draw out’. Boys in particular have practised the hobby of trainspotting under that name since the late 1950s. Others ridicule this hobby and in Britain in the 1980s trainspotter, like anorak, became a derogatory term for an obsessive follower of any minority interest. Irvine Welsh's 1993 novel Trainspotting gave a high profile to the term. The title refers to an episode in which two heroin addicts go to a disused railway station in Edinburgh and meet an old drunk in a disused railway station who asks them if they are trainspotting. There are also other overtones from the language of drugs—track is an addicts' term for a vein, mainlining [1930s] for injecting a drug intravenously, and train for a drug dealer. Trainers were originally training shoes, soft shoes without spikes or studs worn by athletes or sports players for training rather than the sport itself. The short form began to replace the longer one in the late 1970s.