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.

Verb

(en verb)

To take away; to withdraw or remove.

*{{quote-news

, year=2012 , date=May 27 , author=Nathan Rabin , title=TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “New Kid On The Block” (season 4, episode 8; originally aired 11/12/1992) , work=The Onion AV Club citation , page= , passage=The Conan O’Brien-penned half-hour has the capacity to rip our collective hearts out the way the cute, funny bad girl next door does to Bart when she reveals that her new boyfriend is Jimbo Jones, but the show keeps shying away from genuine emotion in favor of jokes that, while overwhelmingly funny, detract from the poignancy and the emotional intimacy of the episode.}}

To take credit or reputation from; to defame or decry.

* Drayton

That calumnious critic / Detracting what laboriously we do.