breadcrumb vs trace

breadcrumb

noun
  • One in a series of clues leading to a person or place. 

  • A single link in a chain indicating the hierarchical location of a directory, web page or similar, used as a navigation aid. 

  • A tiny piece of bread, either one that falls from bread as it is cut or eaten, or one made deliberately by crumbling bread. 

verb
  • To add navigational breadcrumbs to (a web page or user interface). 

  • To use clues or enticements to lead someone in the desired direction. 

  • To sprinkle breadcrumbs on to food, normally before cooking. 

trace

noun
  • An act of tracing. 

  • The ground plan of a work or works. 

  • The intersection of a plane of projection, or an original plane, with a coordinate plane. 

  • The sum of the diagonal elements of a square matrix. 

  • 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. 

  • A residue of some substance or material. 

  • An enquiry sent out for a missing article, such as a letter or an express package. 

  • 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. 

  • A mark left as a sign of passage of a person or animal. 

  • A very small amount. 

  • 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. 

  • An informal road or prominent path in an arid area. 

  • A current-carrying conductive pathway on a printed circuit board. 

verb
  • 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. 

  • To draw or sketch lightly or with care. 

  • To follow the trail of. 

  • To follow the history of. 

  • To copy onto a sheet of paper superimposed over the original, by drawing over its lines. 

How often have the words breadcrumb and trace occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )