Verb

(postpon)

To delay or put off an event, appointment etc.

*, chapter=7

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=“[…] Churchill, my dear fellow, we have such greedy sharks, and wolves in lamb's clothing. Oh, dear, there's so much to tell you, so many warnings to give you, but all that must be postponed for the moment.”}}

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.