trail

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• intransitive verb To allow to drag or stream behind, as along the ground.
• intransitive verb To drag (the body, for example) wearily or heavily.
• intransitive verb To follow the traces or scent of, as in hunting; track.
• intransitive verb To follow the course taken by; pursue.
• intransitive verb To follow behind.
• intransitive verb To lag behind (an opponent).
• intransitive verb To drag or be dragged along, brushing the ground.
• intransitive verb To extend, grow, or droop loosely over a surface.
• intransitive verb To drift in a thin stream.
• intransitive verb To become gradually fainter; dwindle.
• intransitive verb To walk or proceed with dragging steps; trudge.
• intransitive verb To be behind in competition; lag.
• noun A marked or beaten path, as through woods or wilderness.
• noun An overland route.
• noun A marked course through one or more bodies of water, as for recreational boaters or divers.
• noun A mark, trace, course, or path left by a moving body.
• noun The scent of a person or animal.
• noun Something that is drawn along or follows behind; a train.
• noun A succession of things that come afterward or are left behind.
• noun Something that hangs loose and long.
• noun The part of a gun carriage that rests or slides on the ground.
• noun The act of trailing.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To fasten (as wagons) one behind the other so as to form a train.
• In casino, to play a card which neither builds nor takes in anything.
• noun A local term in southern England for confused deposits of glacial debris resting upon soft sands, clays, etc., which latter have been crumpled and squeezed by ice-pressure.
• noun unsorted glacial or related deposits containing human implements ana resting upon a preglacial surface in southern England called the ‘Palæolithic floor.’ See trail, 6.
• noun A latticed frame; a trellis for running or climbing plants.
• noun A running ornament or enrichment of leaves, flowers, tendrils, etc., as in the hollow moldings of Gothic architecture; a wreath.
• To overspread with a tracery or intertwining pattern or ornament.
• To draw along behind.
• To drag or draw loosely along the ground or other surface, as the train of a woman's dress.
• Milit., to carry in an oblique forward position, with the breech or the butt near the ground, the piece or the pike being held by the right hand near the middle: as, to trail arms.
• To beat down or make a beaten path through by frequent treading; make a beaten path through: as, to trail grass.
• To hunt or follow up by the track or scent; follow in the trail or tracks of; track.
• To draw out; lead on, especially in a mischievous or ill-natured way; play upon the ignorance or fears of.
• To hang down or drag loosely behind, as the train of a woman's dress.
• To grow loosely and without self-support to a considerable length along the ground or over bushes, rocks, or other low objects; recline or droop and as it were drag upon the ground, as a branch. See trailing plant, below.
• To move with a slow sweeping motion.
• To loiter or creep along as a straggler or a person who is nearly tired out; walk or make one's way idly or lazily.
• To reach or extend in a straggling way.
• To fish with or from a trailer: as, to trail for mackerel.
• noun Entrails; the intestines of game when cooked and sent to table, as those of snipe and woodcock, and certain fish; also, the intestines of sheep.
• noun A part dragged behind; something drawn after; a train; a rear appendage.
• noun A trailing part or organ; a train: as, the trail of the peacock: often used figuratively.
• noun In artillery, the lower end of the carriage; in field-artillery, that part of the carriage which reats on the ground when unlimbered. See cut under gun-carriage.
• noun Any long appendage, real or apparent, as a line or streak marking the path just passed over by a moving body: as, the trail of a meteor; a trail of smoke.
• noun In astronomy, the elongated image of a star produced upon a photographic plate, which is not made to follow the star's diurnal motion. The intensity of this trail is used as a measure of the star's brightness.