2021-02-15 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด T – track & tract

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2021-02-15

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด T – track & tract

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Dictionary.com

ออกเสียง track = ‘TRAK’

ออกเสียง tract = ‘TRAKT’

Abused, Confused, & Misused Words by Mary Embree

Tract = pamphletor leaflet;

= an extended areaof land: a housing tract

Not to be confused with:

tracked = followed the traces of;

= made tracks upon:

The children tracked mud into the house.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Choose the Right Synonym for track

Noun

TRACE, VESTIGE, TRACK

mean a perceptible sign made by something that has passed.

TRACE may suggest any line, mark, or discernible effect.

the killer left no traces

VESTIGE applies to a tangible reminder such as a fragment or remnantof what is past and gone.

boulders that are vestiges of the last ice age

TRACK implies a continuous line that can be followed.

the fossilized tracks of dinosaurs

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Usage Notes

Do We Get 'On Track' or 'Untracked'?

And just where is this train headed?

When someone is achieving or doing what is necessary or expected,

we say they are on track:

This figurative use of track doesn'trequire any stretch of the imagination.

Track is used in many other contexts to refer to a path of achievement;

you might speak of a tenure-track professorship,

for example,

or say that a person headed in the right directionis on the right track.

On track is commonly followed by a preposition

that indicates direction, such as toward or for:

So far, the metaphor makes sense.

A train runs smoothly when it stays on the tracks

and makes it to its destination.

When it comes off track, things go awry.

In spite of this,

there's another phrase out there that goes against the logic: untracked.

Logically speaking, untracked is a strange word.

It sounds like it suggests derailment

—bad news if you're literally riding on a train.

It has traditional meanings of "not provided with a track"

(as in "snowshoeing over untracked ground")

or "not traced" ("an untracked car").

For our purposes, it turns up frequently in sportswriting;

announcers, in particular, are fond of the phrase

as they are routinely describing athletes as being

either on a hot streakor mired in a slump.

The dictionary defines untrack as an active verb

meaning "to cause to escape from a slump."

In Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged,

the definition for untrack

was a little more literal: "to cause to move out of one's tracks:

cause to get going."

So, what's happening here?

How can on track and untracked both be used when things are going well?

There are a couple theories at play.

One is that the "track" in untracked

isn't like the track of a railroad,

which suggests a route that one has chosen,

but more like a rut, close to the sense of the word defined as

"a path made by or as if by repeated footfalls."

To "come untracked" meansto come out of that rut.

Another theoryis that untracked is what linguists call an eggcorn,

essentially an alteration of on track

that takes hold in the public consciousness

because it "sounds right"and follows the pattern of similar constructions

—in this case, constructions beginning with come or get and another un- prefixed word (e.g., come undone, came unglued, got untethered).

The fondness for untracked in sports writing

dates to early 20th-century boxing columns,

but untrack as an active verbhas consistently seen use in horse racing

—which, naturally, takes place on a track.

To untrack a horsemeans to remove it from competition:

So, the choice of untracked to mean "out of a slump"

does seem to have a long pedigree.

While it might be frustrating to hear

untracked being usedto mean more or less

the same as on track, even though they sound like opposites,

any effort to change these terms now would be like closing the gate after the horse has taken off.

Or running after a train after it has left the station. On its tracks.

Common Errors In English Usage Dictionary

Track home & tract home

Commutersfrom a tract home

may well feel that they are engaged in a rat race,

but that does not justify them

in describing their housing development asa “track.”

“Tract” here means an area of land on which inexpensive

and uniform houses have been built.

Incidentally, note that the phrase is “digestive tract,” not “digestive track.”