trace vs track

trace

verb
  • To follow the trail of. 

  • 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 history of. 

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

noun
  • 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. 

  • 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. 

track

verb
  • To follow the tracks of. 

  • To create music using tracker software. 

  • To make sense; to be consistent with known information 

  • To monitor the movement of a person or object. 

  • To traverse; to move across. 

  • To create a musical recording (a track). 

  • To exhibit good cognitive function. 

  • To discover the location of a person or object by following traces. 

  • To make tracks on or to leave in the form of tracks. 

  • To tow. 

  • To match the movement or change of a person or object. 

  • To travel so that a moving object remains in shot. 

  • To move. 

  • To observe the (measured) state of a person or object over time. 

noun
  • A path or course laid out for a race, for exercise, etc. 

  • The distance between two opposite wheels on a same axletree. 

  • Physical course; way. 

  • The entire lower surface of the foot; said of birds, etc. 

  • The pitch. 

  • A road or other similar beaten path. 

  • The direction and progress of someone or something; path. 

  • Awareness of something, especially when arising from close monitoring. 

  • A tract or area, such as of land. 

  • A song or other relatively short piece of music, on a record, separated from others by a short silence. 

  • The street, as a prostitute's place of work. 

  • A circular (never-ending) data storage unit on a side of magnetic or optical disk, divided into sectors. 

  • A themed set of talks within a conference. 

  • A mark or impression left by the foot, either of man or animal. 

  • The way or rails along which a train moves. 

  • Sound stored on a record. 

  • The physical track on a record. 

  • A mark left by something that has passed along. 

  • The racing events of track and field; track and field in general. 

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