Protract vs Retract - What's the difference?
protract | retract |
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 extend; to protrude.
To pull back inside.
(ambitransitive) To draw back; to draw up.
To take back or withdraw something one has said.
* Bishop Stillingfleet
* Granville
To take back, as a grant or favour previously bestowed; to revoke.
As verbs the difference between protract and retract
is that protract is to draw out; to extend, especially in duration while retract is to pull back inside.protract
English
Verb
(en verb)- to protract a decision or duty
- (Shakespeare)
- A cat can protract and retract its claws.
Synonyms
* (to draw out) prolongDerived terms
* protractileretract
English
Verb
(en verb)- An airplane retracts its wheels for flight.
- Muscles retract after amputation.
- A cat can retract its claws.
- I retract all the accusations I made about the senator and sincerely hope he won't sue me.
- I would as freely have retracted this charge of idolatry as I ever made it.
- She will, and she will not; she grants, denies, / Consents, retracts , advances, and then flies.
- (Woodward)