Attenuate vs Protract - What's the difference?

Attenuate is a related term of protract.

As verbs the difference between attenuate and protract

is that attenuate is to reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree while protract is to draw out; to extend, especially in duration.

As an adjective attenuate

is (botany|of leaves) gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.

attenuate

English

Verb

(attenuat)

To reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.

* 1874 , , Far From the Madding Crowd , ch. 40:

A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone.

To make thinner, as by physically reshaping, starving, or decaying.

* 1899 , , His New Mittens , ch. 4:

Clumps of attenuated turkeys were suspended here and there.

* 1906 , , The Malefactor , ch. 1:

Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.

To weaken.

* Coleridge

The attention attenuates as its sphere contracts.

* Sir F. Palgrave

We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagreness.

To rarefy.

* 1901 , , The First Men in the Moon , ch. 23:

"It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky—was exciting my companion unduly."

(medicine) To reduce the virulence of a bacteria or virus.

(electronics) To reduce the amplitude of an electrical signal.

Antonyms

* amplify (electronics)

Derived terms

* attenuation * attenuable

Adjective

(en adjective)

(botany, of leaves) Gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.

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protract

English

Verb

(en verb)

To draw out; to extend, especially in duration.

*2010 , (Christopher Hitchens), ‘The Men Who Made England’, The Atlantic , Mar 2010:

*:Still, form these extraordinary pages you can learn that it's very bad to be burned alive on a windy day, because the breeze will keep flicking the flames away from you and thus protract the process.

To use a protractor.

(surveying) To draw to a scale; to lay down the lines and angles of, with scale and protractor; to plot.

To put off to a distant time; to delay; to defer.

to protract a decision or duty

(Shakespeare)

To extend; to protrude.

A cat can protract and retract its claws.

Synonyms

* (to draw out) prolong

Derived terms

* protractile