protract

English

Etymology

    From the past participle stem of Latin prōtrahō. By surface analysis, pro- +‎ tract.

    Pronunciation

    • (UK) IPA(key): /pɹəˈtɹakt/
      • Audio (Southern England):(file)
    • (US, Canada) IPA(key): /pɹoʊˈtɹækt/, /pɹəˈtɹækt/
      • Audio (Texas, Austin):(file)

    Verb

    protract (third-person singular simple present protracts, present participle protracting, simple past and past participle protracted)

    1. To draw out; to extend, especially in duration.
      • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Sixt”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
        Doubtless he shrives this woman to her smock;
        Else ne'er could he so long protract his speech.
      • 1755, Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, London: J. and P. Knapton et al., Volume 1, Preface,[1]
        I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave […]
      • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter IV, in Jane Eyre. […], volume II, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 102:
        I should wish now to protract this moment ad infinitum; but I dare not.
      • 1979, Angela Carter, “The Tiger’s Bride”, in Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories‎[2], New York: Henry Holt, published 1996, page 165:
        A bereft landscape of sad browns and sepias of winter lay all about us, the marshland drearily protracting itself towards the wide river.
      • 2010 Mar, Christopher Hitchens, “The Men Who Made England”, in James Bennet, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC:
        Still, from 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.
    2. To use a protractor.
    3. (surveying) To draw to a scale; to lay down the lines and angles of, with scale and protractor; to plot.
      • 1856, Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Meccah‎[3], London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, Volume 3, Chapter 25, page 147, footnote:
        This is a synopsis of our marches, which, protracted on Burckhardt’s map, gives an error of ten miles.
    4. To put off to a distant time; to delay; to defer.
      to protract a decision or duty
    5. To extend; to protrude.
      A cat can protract and retract its claws.

    Synonyms

    Derived terms

    Derived terms

    Translations

    This page is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.