How to Use tracer in a Sentence

tracer

noun
  • The enemy fired tracers at the aircraft carrier.
  • They injected her with a radioactive tracer and tracked it via X-rays.
  • If you were tested, feel free to ask the contact tracer when and where.
    — Nerd Wallet, oregonlive, 3 Aug. 2020
  • Proulx questioned whether the tracer dye moved via an active force at all.
    — Veronique Greenwood, Quanta Magazine, 26 Mar. 2025
  • The point breaks off high spots and roughs stone to shape; the tracer splits more precisely.
    — Roy Berendsohn, Popular Mechanics, 10 Apr. 2021
  • The talc was Katharine’s visual tracer.
    — Natalia Sánchez Loayza, Scientific American, 26 Feb. 2026
  • What has surprised you about your county from your work as a contact tracer?
    — Logan Jaffe, ProPublica, 1 Oct. 2020
  • Plus, each bag comes with a unique tracer number for easy recovery.
    — Madison Yauger, Peoplemag, 13 Apr. 2023
  • Plus, each bag comes with a unique tracer number for easy recovery.
    — Madison Yauger, People.com, 6 Jan. 2025
  • An officer hit by tracer shells, his wounds smoking, begs his men to shoot him.
    — Daniel Todman, WSJ, 15 Oct. 2018
  • Days later, some attendees said no contact tracer had reached out to them.
    — Holly Yan, CNN, 8 Oct. 2020
  • The graph shows tracer binding in four areas of the brain - the lower the line, the more nicotine.
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 15 May 2011
  • Cardenas saw a ditch, ran to it and began crawling along its banks, tracers whizzed over his head.
    — Sig Christenson, ExpressNews.com, 5 Aug. 2019
  • This helps your body use the tracer as sugar in your cells, which emits a form of energy called gamma rays.
    — Susan Russell, Health, 12 Sep. 2024
  • Their tracer arcs converged on the approaching drones.
    — Ken Harbaugh, The Atlantic, 15 Sep. 2025
  • Three nurses on staff, plus Scanlan, serve as contact tracers.
    — Madeline Heim, jsonline.com, 29 Aug. 2025
  • The nurse will then either follow up on those contacts or pass them off to a student contact tracer.
    — Tanya Lewis, Scientific American, 23 Sep. 2020
  • This chemistry gives the molten rock a unique chemical fingerprint that can act like a tracer.
    — Maya Wei-Haas, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 Feb. 2024
  • The background was a backing light made to look like the city with tracer lights for moving cars and green and red lights for traffic.
    — Los Angeles Times, 15 Aug. 2019
  • There are currently just 500 tracers across the state, with plans to add thousands more.
    — Erin Corbett, refinery29.com, 23 Apr. 2020
  • The sun had set, but now the lake was full of phosphorescence so all the movement in the water left sparkling tracers.
    — Hazlitt, 13 Nov. 2024
  • Rather than radioactive tracers, the new method sends an iron oxide contrast agent through the patient's body.
    — John Ericson, Newsweek, 2 Apr. 2014
  • This is by no means the first time NASA has lit up the night with vapor tracers.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 29 June 2017
  • My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15 and some tracer rounds.
    — Emily Shapiro, ABC News, 22 Aug. 2022
  • That was one of several shots in which tracers seemed to have difficulty keeping up with as a ball was in flight.
    — Chantz Martin, FOXNews.com, 14 Apr. 2026
  • Typically, a chemical tracer would be added to the water, like a salt or dye, to track the flow.
    — Kevin Davenport, idahostatesman, 3 July 2018
  • An able tracer of provenance, Walpole delighted in spoofing the past.
    — Dominic Green, WSJ, 26 Oct. 2018
  • The flamethrowers that were fired at old appliances, the tracers that lit up the sky, the teenage girl who had near perfect aim with a pistol.
    — Pipposts, Longreads, 18 Dec. 2019
  • Skip tracers typically use public records and online tools to track people down.
    — Neena Satija, Houston Chronicle, 18 Mar. 2026
  • The contact tracer is overwhelmed, the virus is finding its way into schools and masking is a nightmare to enforce.
    — NBC News, 15 Nov. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'tracer.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: