trackless
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (Southern England): (file)
Adjective
[edit]trackless
- Not having tracks or paths; untrodden.
- 1836, Joanna Baillie, The Bride, Act 1, Dramas 3, page 296
- Solitude in trackless deserts,
- Where locusts, ants, and lizards poorly thrive,
- 1954 February, Trevor Holloway, “Canada's Transcontinental Routes”, in Railway Magazine, page 127:
- In a country so vast as Canada, nothing but the railway could possibly save it from remaining a trackless, undeveloped wilderness.
- 1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved:
- "You got two feet, Sethe, not four," he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; trackless and quiet.
- 2015, Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy:
- It had probably at one point been meant for servants to use to go unobtrusively back and forth, but hadn't been used in years; the floor was dusty and trackless.
- 1836, Joanna Baillie, The Bride, Act 1, Dramas 3, page 296
- Not following a track.
- 1838, Eliza Cook, The Waters:
- What was it that I loved so well about my childhood's home? / It was the wide and wave-lashed shore, the black rocks crowned with foam! / It was the sea-gull's flapping wing, all trackless in its flight, / Its screaming note, that welcomed on the fierce and stormy night!
- (of a train etc.) Not running on tracks.
- trackless trolley
- Without any track; having had the track removed.
- 2021 November 3, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Boxes with functions across the centuries”, in RAIL, number 943, page 59:
- The two structures remain in a remarkable state of preservation, despite finding themselves adrift and trackless in the County Down countryside, after the closure of the station and the line in the 1950s.
Derived terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]not running on tracks
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