'Tract' is Latin for 'a pulling, an extent of space' — from 'trahere' (to draw). Stretched land.
An area of land; a major passage in the body (e.g., digestive tract); a short treatise or pamphlet, especially on a religious or political subject.
From Latin tractus (a drawing, a pulling, a stretch of land, a region), the past participle used as a noun from trahere (to drag, to pull, to draw). Trahere derives from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreǵʰ- (to drag, to draw), a root that generated Latin tractare (to handle, to treat), trahere, and the vast family of English words in tract-, treat-, and trail-. The anatomical sense (the digestive tract, the respiratory tract) treats the body s continuous passages as stretches or courses
An astonishing number of common English words hide the Latin root 'trahere' (to pull): 'attract' (pull toward), 'extract' (pull out), 'contract' (pull together), 'distract' (pull apart), 'abstract' (pulled away), 'subtract' (pulled from below), 'retract' (pull back), 'protract' (pull forward), and 'trait' (a drawn feature).