trackless

English

Etymology

track +‎ -less

Pronunciation

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Adjective

trackless

trackless trolleys in Cambridge, MA (USA)

1. 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,

   • 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.

2. 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!

3. (of a train etc.) Not running on tracks.

   trackless trolley

4. 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

• tracklessly
• tracklessness

Translations

not having tracks or trails

• Latin: invius

not running on tracks

• Bulgarian: безрелсов (bezrelsov)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 無軌／无轨 (zh) (wúguǐ)

• Spanish: destraciado, destraciada f