How to Use paper trail in a Sentence

paper trail

noun
Definition of paper trailnext
  • They covered up the fraud and were careful not to leave a paper trail.
  • The edges of the paper trail in the water, soaking it up like a sponge.
    — Emily Matchar, Smithsonian, 17 May 2018
  • If that were the case, there should be a paper trail to confirm it.
    — Robert Goulder, Forbes, 13 Feb. 2023
  • And aside from the obvious paper trail, the group seems to have a slam dunk of a case.
    — Breanna Edwards, The Root, 19 Oct. 2017
  • No paper trail has tied Frank to George or even George to Ida.
    — The Root, 13 Apr. 2018
  • And all those tweets and posts end up being a paper trail.
    — Hazlitt, 16 Dec. 2022
  • There’s no paper trail of any unit being sold to any group.
    — David Anderson, The Aegis, 11 Sep. 2017
  • Because Richard has a paper trail of all the things that happened.
    — Adam B. Vary, Variety, 7 June 2023
  • The paper trail between you and the cruise line did not spell out the airfare refund rules.
    — Christopher Elliott, BostonGlobe.com, 5 Jan. 2023
  • But there was no way the casting team could have known since there was no paper trail.
    — Emily Longeretta, Variety, 14 June 2024
  • Three plays after the paper trail, Dak found Dez for his second catch of the night, this one a 40-yarder down to the 5-yard line.
    — Mac Engel, star-telegram, 17 Dec. 2017
  • There is also a sort of online paper trail that seems to grow each day.
    — Washington Post, 18 Sep. 2021
  • But in 1982, the task force had to rely on a literal paper trail.
    — Chicago Tribune, 29 Sep. 2022
  • That ball is outta here and there is nothing left but a paper trail!
    — Jackson Weimer, Forbes, 18 Sep. 2021
  • And the state is one of a few whose election machines still produce no paper trail.
    — Paul Waldman, The Denver Post, 28 Aug. 2019
  • But in a phone interview, Li says that a lack of a paper trail wouldn’t come as a surprise.
    — National Geographic, 17 May 2017
  • Every vote has a paper trail, and paper cannot be hacked.
    — Baltimore Sun, 17 May 2022
  • Oral history was – and still is – a major link to our past, but the paper trail can go cold.
    — USA Today, 17 Oct. 2019
  • The vast majority of votes cast in the United States right now are with a paper trail.
    — CBS News, 19 May 2024
  • The company prefers e-mails to phone calls, since the paper trail is easier to track.
    — Clare Malone, The New Yorker, 2 May 2024
  • The paper trail dried up when the consultants left Matrix.
    — Sarah Blaskey, Anchorage Daily News, 27 July 2022
  • Ozier has found the paper trail that might prove the latter to be ambiguous, at best.
    — Rosalind Bentley, ajc, 24 Aug. 2021
  • Perhaps the biggest problem in Schweikert’s ethics case is the sheer volume and scale of the paper trail against him.
    — Ronald J. Hansen, The Arizona Republic, 24 Oct. 2020
  • The only kind of money that leaves no paper trail is paper.
    — Gilad Edelman, Wired, 28 Mar. 2022
  • But 14 states have no paper trail for their voting systems, and Georgia is one of them.
    — Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, 7 Nov. 2017
  • That way, there would never be a paper trail showing that the two of them had exchanged messages.
    — Zachariah Mushawatu, The Christian Science Monitor, 3 Apr. 2024
  • Someone can make batches of the deadly stuff and never leave a paper trail.
    — Joe Pappalardo, Popular Mechanics, 13 Mar. 2018
  • Without a paper trail, there's no way to prove someone asked for their money back.
    — Christopher Elliott, USA TODAY, 28 Apr. 2023
  • But tenants’ rights groups and lawyers said court cases, the only public paper trail of evictions, don’t show the complete picture.
    — Nick Grube, ProPublica, 14 Aug. 2024
  • Passengers call the livery base by phone, meaning there is no app username or digital paper trail as with Uber or Lyft.
    — Evan Simko-Bednarski, New York Daily News, 23 Apr. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'paper trail.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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