IdiomDaily Life
English
Englishmake tracks
Meaning: To leave, usually quickly.
Example: “It's getting dark, so we'd better make tracks.”
Equivalents in other languages
Latvian: Ņemt kāju pār plecu Literally: To take your leg over your shoulder
Origin: American, from around 1830, and one of the earliest print appearances comes from Thomas Chandler Haliburton's popular "Sam Slick" newspaper sketches, first published in a Nova Scotia weekly in 1836. The image is entirely literal: someone running or moving quickly leaves visible footprints, or tracks, behind them, and "making tracks" simply names that physical evidence as a stand-in for the hasty departure itself. By around 1860 the phrase had spread from American regional slang into standard English more broadly.
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