spoor, noun

/spʊə(r)/
Forms:
spor, sporeShow more Formerly also spor, spore, spur.
Origin:
Dutch.
1. a. Plural spoors, or unchanged. In the plural : Footprints or tracks. b. noncount The trace or trail left by a person or animal. Also in the phrase on spoor, following a trail.
1823 in T. Pringle Some Account of Eng. Settlers in Albany (1824) 84Soon afterwards the spoor (foot-prints) of three Caffers was discovered, and of course we then knew where they went.
1824 S. Afr. Jrnl I. 27A lion, having carried off a heifer of two years old, was followed on the spoor or track for fully five hours.
1832 Graham’s Town Jrnl 1 June 91He followed the spoor of a naked foot for about half an hour, and came up with the prisoner, upon whom these articles, witness’ property, were found.
1835 A. Smith Diary (1940) II. 34Spoors of many lions along the road.
1837 ‘N. Polson’ Subaltern’s Sick Leave 136He became aware of a lion following his spoor, that is taking up his trail of footsteps, a common habit of the lion when hungry.
1844 J. Backhouse Narr. of Visit 223This evening two of our horses have strayed...As the country was bushy, it was needful to trace them by their footprints. This, indeed, is the common mode of finding cattle in South Africa: it is called ‘following the spoor’.
1845 J.M. Bowker Speeches & Sel. (1864) 154Not only can the farmer follow the spoor through Kaffirland, but he can recover his cattle there at any time, if he can identify them.
1851 T. Shone Diary. 28 Feb.The young men went thro the Kap river and could find no Kaffer spors.
1852 M.B. Hudson S. Afr. Frontier Life 174News..Was brought by patrol who had been out on spoor In pursuit of some cattle.
a1858 J. Goldswain Chron. II. 62We fell in with the spur of meney more Cattle and a number of Kaffer spurs.
1862 E.L. Price Jrnls (1956) 90He had chased Elands till falling in with his brother’s spoor, who had evidently been on foot and wandering, he augured ill for him and giving up Elands chased him — the Bushman accompanying him.
1895 A.B. Balfour 1200 Miles in Waggon 105Another day he wounded a magnificent koodoo bull, but could not follow its spoor (footprints).
1896 H.A. Bryden Tales of S. Afr. 15We did find spoor of a man and donkey to the north-east.
1907 J.P. Fitzpatrick Jock of Bushveld 139I hunted for Koodoo spoor; there was none to be seen but on an old molehill there was a single print of a dog’s foot.
1913 J.J. Doke Secret City 94I called Klaas to the front and told him to hunt carefully and pick up the spoors.
1925 D. Kidd Essential Kafir 288A Bushman is so used to follow a spoor through the bush that he will tell that an animal has passed by that way recently, his judgement being based on the slightest bending of twigs or displacement of stones.
a1936 E.N. Marais Soul of Ape (1973) 126Heavy rain had fallen, destroying every vestige of spoor.
1958 R.E. Lighton Out of Strong 8I read the spoor as the white man reads the black marks on the paper.
1966 F.G. Butler Take Root or Die (1970) 71Cattle spoors, naked human footprints, and signs of a struggle.
1990 J. Heale Scowler’s Luck 45He might as well make a point of identifying the human spoor as well from now on, especially since he hadn’t spotted any decent animal tracks yet.
1994 M. Roberts tr. of J.A. Wahlberg’s Trav. Jrnls 1838–56 68Spoor of rhinoceros etc.
c. transferred sense The track of a wagon or motor vehicle. Often with defining word, as motor-spoor or wagon-spoor.
1856 R.E.E. Wilmot Diary (1984) 12From Adcocks we were directed to follow the waggon spoors, in pursuance of which direction we struck off to the right.
a1858 J. Goldswain Chron. I. 38Found a Wagon spur wich I followed untill it lead me into a Wagon road.
1874 ‘P.’ in A.M.L. Robinson Sel. Articles from Cape Monthly Mag. (1978) 174We found, to our chagrin, that we had lost our road...However, as we saw the spoor of our wagon was still ahead, we deemed it advisable to overtake our heavy baggage.
1879 C.L. Norris-Newman in J. Crwys-Williams S. Afr. Despatches (1989) 52One thing we had observed coming along the road was the fresh spoor of a wagon or two.
1920 F.C. Cornell Glamour of Prospecting 132Not far from this water-hole we came upon the first trace of man we had seen for many days, a faint old waggon-spoor in the sand.
1925 D. Kidd Essential Kafir 4When they had previously noticed the spoor of the waggons in the sand they at once decided that these could only have been caused by animals, for they had never seen any spoor marks except those left by animals.
1944 ‘Twede in Bevel’ Piet Kolonel 61I had followed a Trojan car..and had watched with interest the crooked and waving spoor peculiar to Trojans struggling through sand with their narrow track.
1952 L.G. Green Lords of Last Frontier 31Byleveld can tell the age of a motor-spoor at a glance.
c1963 [see waterboom sense 2].
d. figurative.
1852 M.B. Hudson S. Afr. Frontier Life 218His household affairs..No longer depend on the Hottentot vrouw; All marks of her spoor from the room are effaced.
1950 R.K. Cope in B. Sachs S. Afr. Opinion: Trek Anthology (1971) 186It is on the less inspired productions of the period that the present generation turns an inquiring eye. The spoors of overrated early writers of Afrikaans literature are found to be a hindrance.
1977 P.C. Venter Soweto 231If you browse through the dailies, the spoor of violence is there.
2. With distinguishing epithet:
blood spoor, also (occasionally) bloed spoor/ˈblʊt -/ [Afrikaans, bloed blood], the blood traces left by a wounded person or animal;
dew spoor, see quotations;
hand spoor, see quotation 1980.
1826 A.G. Bain Jrnls (1949) 119The Bushmen traced the ‘Bloed Spoor’ a great way down the river, but the bleeding monster had got into another Zeekoegat.
1835 T.H. Bowker Journal. 6 Feb.Five traces seen in the Morning no blood spoors this time.
1862 Queenstown Free Press 16 Sept. (Pettman)A native man..came somewhat suddenly upon the two wolves. He..shot both. The blood spoor was traced a considerable distance.
a1875 T. Baines Jrnl of Res. (1964) II. 219We found his blood-spoor on the rock where he had passed.
1898 G. Nicholson 50 Yrs 211Animals of certain size (say up to three hundred-weight) do not afford sufficient resistance to projectiles to cause an expansion of the bullet, and therefore make but a small external wound, in consequence of which little or no ‘blood spoor’ is visible generally, to enable or encourage a man to follow up wounded game.
1907 J.P. Fitzpatrick Jock of Bushveld 285There was nothing for it but to hark back to the last blood spoor and, by following it up, find out what had happened.
1930 Outspan 31 Oct. 15His shot had been a poor one and for hours afterwards he had followed the blood spoor amongst the low, scrub-clad hills.
1936 H.F. Trew Botha Treks 113We found the boxes of explosives..together with a good deal of blood spoor.
1968 S. Cloete Chetoko 17He came to where the man had abandoned his hunt. It had been a big buck — an eland, as he had thought — and he followed the blood spoor.
1970 E. Crabbe in Outpost (1970) 223In late April 1968, Leon and his new handler were dropped to track a blood spoor after security forces had engaged a group of terrorists.
1972 Sunday Times 24 Sept. 5Disappeared near the Ellis Park railway station leaving a trail of blood in the streets. But neither the blood spoor nor tracker dogs led to his hideout.
a1858 J. Goldswain Chron. II. 75They must have gon over verey erley in the Morning as the prent of thear feet on the grass is waat is caled a due spoor.
a1858 J. Goldswain Chron. II. 128Mr Thomas left quite late at Night and the Kaffers spoors was what his caled a dewspoor — that is wile the dew is falling it can plainly be known.
1980 E. Joubert Long Journey of Poppie Nongena 27We like to smear the floors of our house...We make patterns in the wet dung, down on our knees with the palms of our hands, drawing wide circles with great sweeps away from our bodies and back again. We Xhosa people call these patterns indima or hand spoor.
3. combinations
spoor-boy obsolete [see boy], a tracker;
spoor law  obsolete except in historical contexts, a regulation, promulgated in 1816 by Lord Charles Somerset (and repealed in 1836), which gave frontier farmers the right to follow the spoor of stolen cattle beyond the boundary of the Cape Colony, and to demand compensation from the village nearest to the spoor; (objective) spoor-tracker noun, spoor-tracking participial adjective, spoor-watching verbal noun.
1959 L.G. Green These Wonders 14One of Martin’s spoor-boys could follow elephant across a wide expanse of hard rock.
1929 W.M. Macmillan Bantu, Boer & Briton 56 (Swart)The Spoor Law is described in a memo. drafted by Mr (now Sir) W.E. Stanford, in 1882.
1936 Cambridge Hist. of Brit. Empire VIII. 306In spite of the ‘spoor law’..colonists certainly continued to be subject to devastating cattle raids.
1937 C. Birkby Zulu Journey 251The famous ‘spoor law’. If the spoor of a stolen beast is tracked to any native location, the people of the place must take up the trail and either trace the missing beast or compensate the owner; the ‘spoor law’ often cuts the Gordian knot of detecting the real culprit.
1937 B.J.F. Laubscher Sex, Custom & Psychopathology 313When the early Colonial Government found how difficult it was to recover property, or live stock stolen from the colonists by the natives, they introduced the ‘Spoor Law’ based on this principle of collective responsibility in native custom.
1907 W.C. Scully By Veldt & Kopje 88Old Gezwindt, a Hottentot celebrated all over the countryside for his skill as a spoor-tracker.
1985 S.-Easter Oct.–Nov. 52Everything you hear about the spoor-tracking qualities of those Red Indians is absolutely true.
1989 Weekend Post 11 Nov. (Leisure) 4At least half of the route is on a jeep track and when the soil is smooth and damp after rain this makes an ideal area for spoor-watching.
In the plural :Footprints or tracks.
The trace or trail left by a person or animal. Also in the phrase on spoor, following a trail.
The track of a wagon or motor vehicle. Often with defining word, as motor-spoor or wagon-spoor.
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figurative or allusive
obsolete or obsolescent
spook, verbv.spoor, verbv.
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