spoor

Early 19th century, from Afrikaans spoor, from Dutch spoor (“track”).^[1]

Akin to Old English and Old Norse spor (whence Danish spor), and German Spur, all from Proto-Germanic *spurą. Compare spurn.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /spʊə/, /spɔː/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /spʊɹ/, /spɔɹ/
• (Scotland, Northern Ireland) IPA^(key): /spʉːɹ/
• (Ireland) IPA^(key): /spuːɹ/
• Rhymes: -ʊə(ɹ)
• Homophone: spore (in some accents)

spoor (usually uncountable, plural spoors)

1. The track, trail, droppings, or scent of an animal.
   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird - and what animal could leave such a mark? - its foot was so much larger than an ostrich's that its height upon the same scale must be enormous.

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     Even poor Nobs appeared dejected as we quit the compound and set out upon the well-marked spoor of the abductor.

   • 1971, William S. Burroughs, The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead, page 10:

     Now he has picked up the spoor of drunken vomit and there is the doll sprawled against a wall, his pants streaked with urine.

   • 2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 5, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN:

     From the spoor, skilled trackers can deduce an individual's age, sex, physical condition, speed, and fatigue level, as well as the time of day it passed by.

   • 2023 October 10, HarryBlank, “The Cruelest Fight”, in SCP Foundation‎^[1], archived from the original on 31 August 2024:

     Which was good. If she kept her superego occupied with minor considerations, the lizard brain could keep planning routes and obscuring caches and examining half-melted human candles for the Markey equivalent of spoor without interference. She didn't want her emotional intelligence and creativity to be paying close attention when she found Michael Nass half-fused to a cave wall, drooling pink slime into the dust and talking portentous nonsense about Norte Chico burial rituals while his jellified skin sloughed off, considering whose fault it had been that he'd been at AAF-D when the sinners came marching in.

spoor (third-person singular simple present spoors, present participle spooring, simple past and past participle spoored)

1. (transitive) To track (an animal) by following its spoor.

• proso, roops, sopor, sporo-

• IPA^(key): /spoːr/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: spoor
• Rhymes: -oːr

From Middle Dutch spor, from Old Dutch *spor, from Proto-Germanic *spurą, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH-.

spoor n (plural sporen, diminutive spoortje n)

1. track
2. railway track
3. trace
4. spoor
5. lead, trail, clue

• Afrikaans: spoor
  • → English: spoor
  • → Fanagalo: spor
  • → Zulu: sipolo
• Jersey Dutch: spôr
• Negerhollands: spoor
• Petjo: sepoor
• → Caribbean Javanese: sepur
• → Indonesian: sepur (“railway track”)
• → Javanese: ꦱꦼꦥꦸꦂ (sepur)
  • → Indonesian: sepur (“train”) (semantic loan)
• → Papiamentu: spor

From Middle Dutch spore, from Old Dutch *spora, variant of *sporo, from Proto-West Germanic *spurō, from Proto-Germanic *spurô, from Proto-Indo-European *sperH- (“to kick”).

spoor f (plural sporen, diminutive spoortje n)

1. spur (multiple senses)
2. spore

• Afrikaans: spoor
• → Papiamentu: spor, spoor

spoor

1. Alternative form of spore