token vs trace

token

noun
  • Something given or shown as a symbol or guarantee of authority or right; a sign of authenticity, of power, good faith. 

  • An object or disclosure to attest or authenticate the bearer or an instruction. 

  • An atomic piece of data, such as a word, for which a meaning may be inferred during parsing. 

  • A lexeme; a basic, grammatically indivisible unit of a language such as a keyword, operator or identifier. 

  • A keepsake. 

  • A piece of stamped metal or plastic, etc., used as a substitute for money; a voucher that can be exchanged for goods or services. 

  • Support for a belief; grounds for an opinion. 

  • A minor attempt for appearance's sake, or to minimally comply with a requirement. 

  • A meaningless placeholder used as a substitute for sensitive data. 

  • A conceptual object that can be possessed by a computer, process, etc. in order to regulate a turn-taking system such as a token ring network. 

  • A physical object used for exchange between drivers and signalmen on single track lines. 

  • A particular thing to which a concept applies. 

  • A single example of a certain word in a text or corpus. 

  • An extraordinary event serving as evidence of supernatural power. 

  • Something serving as an expression of something else. 

  • A small physical object, often designed to give the appearance of a common thing, used to represent a person or character in a board game or other situation. 

  • A characteristic sign of a disease or of a bodily disorder, a symptom; a sign of a bodily condition, recovery, or health. 

  • Ten and a half quires, or, commonly, 250 sheets, of paper printed on both sides; also, in some cases, the same number of sheets printed on one side, or half the number printed on both sides. 

  • A member of a group of people that is included within a larger group to comply with a legal or social requirement. 

  • A tally. 

  • A seal guaranteeing the quality of an item. 

  • A bit of leather having a peculiar mark designating a particular miner. Each hewer sent one of these with each corf or tub he had hewn. 

  • A thin bed of coal indicating the existence of a thicker seam at no great distance. 

  • A piece of metal given beforehand to each person in the congregation who is permitted to partake of the Lord's Supper. 

  • In a loom, a colored signal to show the weaver which shuttle to use. 

adj
  • Done as an indication or a pledge. 

  • Perfunctory or merely symbolic; done or existing for appearance's sake, or to minimally comply with a requirement. 

  • He was hired as the company's token black person. 

  • Included in minimal numbers in order to create an impression or illusion of diversity, especially ethnic or gender diversity. 

verb
  • To betroth 

  • To symbolize, instantiate 

  • To betoken, indicate, portend, designate, denote 

trace

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

  • 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. 

  • An act of tracing. 

  • 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 token and trace occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )