track down
track down — phrasal verb
- track downbase form
- tracks down3rd person singular
- tracking down-ing form
- tracked downpast simple
1. to succeed in finding a person, animal, or object after putting effort into a th
to succeed in finding a person, animal, or object after putting effort into a thorough search, often across multiple locations or over a period of time
The police finally tracked down the stolen car in an abandoned garage outside the city.
track down + concrete object (stolen car)
Keiko spent three months tracking down a rare first-edition novel for her father's birthday.
track down + rare/elusive object
The rescue team tracked down the missing hikers after a week-long search.
Wei managed to track down an old classmate through a social media group.
The journalist tracked down the only witness who could confirm the story.
- locate
more formal and less energetic; you can locate something without much effort, but tracking down implies a persistent search
- hunt down
stronger and more dramatic, often used for people fleeing or avoiding capture
- ferret out
suggests digging through hidden or hard-to-reach information; less common in everyday speech
- lose track of
to stop knowing where someone or something is, the opposite of successfully finding them
- misplace
to put something somewhere and then forget where it is; much less effort is involved
文法句型
track + object + down
用法筆記
The object (the thing being found) always comes between 'track' and 'down' when it is a pronoun (e.g. 'track it down'), but can also come after 'down' when it is a longer noun phrase (e.g. 'track down the person who saw the accident').