backtrace
|back-trace|
/ˈbæk.treɪs/
trace backward through calls/steps
Etymology
'backtrace' originates from modern English compounding of 'back' + 'trace', where 'back' meant 'rear' or 'behind' and 'trace' derived ultimately from Latin 'trahere' meaning 'to draw' or 'to pull'.
'trace' entered English via Old French (e.g. 'tracier') from Latin 'trahere' ('to draw, pull'); the compound 'backtrace' is a relatively recent technical coinage from 20th-century computing, formed by combining English 'back' + 'trace'.
Initially, 'trace' meant a mark or track left by something; over time, especially in computing, it came to mean a recorded sequence of execution steps, and 'backtrace' specifically denotes tracing those steps backward.
Meanings by Part of Speech
Noun 1
in computing, a report or record of the active stack frames (the sequence of function or procedure calls) at a particular point in program execution, often produced when a program crashes or when debugging.
The debugger printed a backtrace showing the sequence of function calls that led to the crash.
Synonyms
Last updated: 2025/12/28 01:38