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Elongate vs Protract - What's the difference?

elongate | protract | Related terms |

As verbs the difference between elongate and protract

is that elongate is to make long or longer by pulling and stretching; to make elongated while protract is to draw out; to extend, especially in duration.

As an adjective elongate

is lengthened, extended.

elongate

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • lengthened, extended.
  • slender.
  • Verb

    (elongat)
  • To make long or longer by pulling and stretching; to make elongated.
  • To depart to, or be at, a distance; especially, to recede apparently from the sun, as a planet in its orbit.
  • (obsolete) To remove further off.
  • (Sir Thomas Browne)

    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