MEANING
1. A trail of tracks, scent, droppings or other signs left by an animal.
2. A trace or series of signs by which someone’s or something’s progress can be followed.
3. To follow or track a person or animal by the trail of signs they leave.
Use it for
describing animal tracks across a landscape; showing a creature’s passage without showing the creature; building a pursuit from traces; distinguishing a trail from a single footprintNames a trail of signs left by a moving animal, not just one isolated footprint. Writing functions: Traces and pursuit.
Words that belong together
- follow the spoor
- fresh spoor
- the spoor of an animal
On the page
The spoor crossed the mud and vanished beneath the reeds.
Only the fresh spoor showed that anything had passed through the clearing.
Her letters left a faint documentary spoor through the years of exile.
The essay follows the spoor of the metaphor across three successive drafts.
The trackers spoored the animal until the stony ground erased its passage.
Nearby words
Word forms
- Base
- spoor
- Past tense
- spoored
- Past participle
- spoored
- Present participle
- spooring
Usage notes
Noun: spoor; plural spoor or spoors, often used as a mass noun. Verb: spoor, spoors, spoored, spoored, spooring; future will spoor. Verbal use is uncommon and characteristic of tracking contexts. Register: neutral. Commonness: uncommon (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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