noun

• (electronics, computing) A race condition; a bug or problem that occurs when two or more components attempt to use the same resource at the same time.
  "Many problems of oscillations and races are solved by this arrangement."
• A guide or channel that a component of a machine moves along:
  "I have lately seen a shuttle machine of Messrs. Grover Baker's construction, in which the shuttle worked in a semi-circular race and produced two stitches at each revolution of the wheel."
• A guide or channel that a component of a machine moves along:
  "These bearings do not employ a loading groove or filling slot but utilize an uninterrupted race groove containing the maximum number of balls that can be introduced by eccentric displacement of the races. Due to the relatively large size of the balls and the fact that the ball curvature is only slightly less than the race curvature, the bearings have comparatively high load carrying capacity in both axial and radial directions."
• (gambling) A keno gambling session.
  "Your odds are sometimes significantly better with video keno […] But because video keno plays so much faster, you're likely to lose more money over a given period. Live keno races start every 10 minutes, but you can make 100 bets on a video version in the same amount of time."

verb

• (intransitive) To take part in a race (in the sense of a contest).
  "The drivers were racing around the track."
• (transitive) To compete against in a race (contest).
  "I raced him to the car, but he was there first, so he got to ride shotgun."
• (intransitive) To move or drive at high speed; to hurry or speed.
  "As soon as it was time to go home, he raced for the door."
• (intransitive, of a motor) To run rapidly when not engaged to a transmission.
  ""My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.""

noun

• A group of sentient beings, particularly people, distinguished by common ancestry, heritage or characteristics (see Wikipedia's article on historical definitions of race):
  "A treaty was concluded between the race of elves and the race of men."
• A group of organisms distinguished by common characteristics; often an informal infraspecific rank in taxonomy, below species:
  "[I]nnumerable popingayes of ſundry kindes are found chattering in the groues of thoſe fenny places. […] For in the raſe of this large lande, Colonus [Christopher Columbus] him ſelfe brought and ſent to the courte a greate number of euery kynde, the which it was lawfull for all the people to beholde, and are yet dayly browght in like manner."
• A group of organisms distinguished by common characteristics; often an informal infraspecific rank in taxonomy, below species:
  "Two races are certainly valid. The Atlantic race (P. v. vitulina) is distinguishable from the Pacific race (P. v. richardi Gray, 1864) by skull characters."
• A group of organisms distinguished by common characteristics; often an informal infraspecific rank in taxonomy, below species:
  "Nevertheless, as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or were to cultivate, during many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very poor soil (in which case, however, some effect would have to be attributed to the direct action of the poor soil), that they would to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal stock."

verb

• (obsolete) To pass down certain phenotypic traits to offspring.
  "D'Hervieux obſerves that it is uſual to put the female canary bird to the male goldfinch, linnet, or the like, to breed; but for his part, he ſhould chuſe to put the male canary-bird to the female goldfinch, linnet, &c. becauſe the male uſually races more than the female, i. e. the young ones take more after the male than after the female."