Talk:trail

Tea room discussion

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)

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)

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)

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)

Missing definition(s)

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)

RFV discussion: May 2021

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.

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trail

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)

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)

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