Definition of paper trail
: documents (such as financial records) from which a person's actions may be traced or opinions learned
What's Trending Now
More Trending Words
Examples of paper trail in a Sentence
They covered up the fraud and were careful not to leave a paper trail.
Recent Examples of paper trail from the Web
-
There is no paper trail and the exact location of Shaw's lynching in unknown.
-
More recently, another relative purchased an AR-15 in a legal person-to-person transaction with no oversight or paper trail whatsoever.
-
Any question of Cambridge advocating improper communication between campaign efforts was reinforced by Nix’s description of using an email system that deleted messages after a short period — eliminating a paper trail.
-
Banks, insurers, shippers, their corporate customers and governments, abetted by technology companies, are combining forces to digitise the paper trail.
-
Missouri does do post-election audits, does use machines that leave a paper trail, and does a daily backup of voter registration rolls.
-
The senators said 14 states had used at least some machines in 2016 without a paper trail that could be audited.
-
The forms aren’t filed with any government agency and don’t produce a paper trail that can be shared with immigration officials.
-
Someone can make batches of the deadly stuff and never leave a paper trail.
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'paper trail.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
First Known Use of paper trail
1935
PAPER TRAIL Defined for English Language Learners
paper trail
Definition of paper trail for English Language Learners
-
: documents (such as financial records or memos) that make it possible for someone at a later time to know what was done, discussed, etc.
Learn More about paper trail
Seen and Heard
What made you want to look up paper trail? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
