Talk:trail

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Latest comment: 3 years ago by Kiwima in topic RFV discussion: May 2021
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Tea room discussion

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Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

Is ther a sense for trail meaning to use as bait or offer as bait? (Might be a primarily british use.) RJFJR 22:42, 25 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

could this be to drag something odoriferous (like a red herring!) to train or mislead a scent-following hunting animal? DCDuring TALK 23:03, 25 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
Here's the cite: Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archives (It's a spy/horror novel, the laundry is a nickname for a secret agency. I checked: the author is British):
"It's you they're after. As long as you're here in a laundry safe house they can't get to you. But if we trail you in front of them, ... , we might be able to draw them out."
It seems like a figurative extension of the second sense of trail, more specifically the sense I suggested above (Owww! [pulled muscle patting myself on the back]). I would definitely put the citation on the citation page. I don't think the usage is particularly UK, but the UK has reputedly had better spies-on-the-ground than the US. The question is whether it would be better to have:
  1. a figurative sense of "trail" which would be closer to the use above, but not include purpose
  2. an extension of sense 2 incorporating purpose, but remaining concrete, physical about the "trail".
  3. a sense specific to the usage illustrated.
  4. more than one of the above.
I think I prefer having both 1 and 2, but not 3. DCDuring TALK 19:41, 26 October 2008 (UTC)Reply
I would gloss this as dangle, which is somewhat different from what we have at sense 2 currently (though the senses are certainly related). Supporting cites for something like this: [1], [2], [3]. Seems likely to be derived from the angling sense, in which one trails a lure behind a boat. -- Visviva 15:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

Missing definition(s)

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Are we missing two meanings...

  • the meaning when used such as "the campaign trail". It's not really covered by any of the meanings.
  • tourist trail, as in a defined scenic route, but it is not mentioned here.

--Dmol (talk) 20:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)Reply

RFV discussion: May 2021

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The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for verification (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.


Rfv-sense: To flatten (grass, etc.) by walking through it; to tread down. There's supposedly a Longfellow quote there, but I couldn't find it (admittedly only using level 7 searching) Indian subcontinent (talk) 08:38, 16 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure it is what was intended, but I have cited a sense of trail that was not there which seems to be to form a trail on (by going over). Kiwima (talk) 01:43, 17 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

RFV-resolved Kiwima (talk) 23:30, 24 May 2021 (UTC)Reply