Tracts

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An extensive area of land usually farmland or undeveloped territory ; a collection of nerve fibers in the brain or spinal cord that transmit signals between different parts
2. A broad expanse of ground such as a section of countryside or property ; a pathway in the nervous system consisting of linked nerve fibers for communication
3. A sizable piece of land, often used for agriculture or development ; a group of axons within the central nervous system conveying nerve impulses

Etymology: "Tracts" is the plural of "tract", and the sense "stretch of land" is the one most readers meet first. That sense is the newer-seeming end of a word whose oldest meaning was about writing. The noun comes from Latin "tractus", meaning "a haul, drawing, a drawing out", from "trahere", "to pull, drag". Middle English had "tract" for a treatise or commentary, borrowed through Old English, and that sense ran alongside another in which "tract" meant an expanse of space or time. The two senses share one picture: something drawn out in a line. A written passage is a stretch of text pulled out along the page, and a region of land is a stretch of ground pulled out across the map. The word is a doublet of "trait", which came into English from French and kept the same Latin source while taking a different path, giving it a sense of a drawn feature rather than a drawn-out expanse.

Synonyms: areas, regions, sections