different between attenuate vs protract

English

Etymology

From Latin attenu?re, from attenu?t-, at- = ad-, ad- (“to”) + tenu?re (“to make thin”), tenuis (“thin”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??t?n.ju?.e?t/

Verb

attenuate (third-person singular simple present attenuates, present participle attenuating, simple past and past participle attenuated)

1. (transitive) To reduce in size, force, value, amount, or degree.
   • 1874, Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd, ch. 40:

     A manor-house clock from the far depths of shadow struck the hour, one, in a small, attenuated tone.

2. (transitive) To make thinner, as by physically reshaping, starving, or decaying.
   • 1899, Stephen Crane, His New Mittens, ch. 4:

     Clumps of attenuated turkeys were suspended here and there.

   • 1906, E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Malefactor, ch. 1:

     Lovell, wan and hollow-eyed, his arm in a sling, his once burly frame gaunt and attenuated with disease, nodded.

3. (intransitive) To become thin or fine; to grow less.
4. (transitive) To weaken.
   • 1851, Sir Francis Palgrave, The History of Normandy and of England, ch. IV:

     We may reject and reject till we attenuate history into sapless meagreness.

5. (transitive) To rarefy.
   • 1901, H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon, ch. 23:

     "It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our circumstances and surroundings—great loss of weight, attenuated but highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid sky—was exciting my companion unduly."

6. (transitive, medicine) To reduce the virulence of a bacterium or virus.
7. (transitive, electronics) To reduce the amplitude of an electrical, radio, or optical signal.
8. (brewing) (of a beer) To become less dense as a result of the conversion of sugar to alcohol.

Antonyms

• (electronics): amplify

Derived terms

• attenuation
• attenuable
• attenuator
• attenuative

Related terms

Translations

Adjective

attenuate (comparative more attenuate, superlative most attenuate)

1. (botany, of leaves) Gradually tapering into a petiole-like extension toward the base.

Translations

Italian

Verb

attenuate

1. second-person plural present indicative of attenuare
2. second-person plural imperative of attenuare
3. feminine plural of attenuato

Latin

Verb

attenu?te

1. second-person plural present active imperative of attenu?

English

Etymology

From the past participle stem of Latin pr?trah?, essentially pro- +? tract.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /p???t?akt/

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.
   • c. 1591, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 1, Act I, Scene 2,^[1]

     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,^[2]

     I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please, have sunk into the grave […]

   • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter 19,^[3]

     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, New York: Henry Holt, 1996, p. 165,^[4]

     A bereft landscape of sad browns and sepias of winter lay all about us, the marshland drearily protracting itself towards the wide river.

   • 2010, Christopher Hitchens, ‘The Men Who Made England’, The Atlantic, Mar 2010:

     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, London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, Volume 3, Chapter 25, page 147, footnote,^[5]

     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

   • c. 1609, William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2,^[6]

     […] Let us bury him,

     And not protract with admiration what

     Is now due debt. To the grave!

   • 1736, Stephen Duck, “To Death” in Poems on Several Occasions, London: for the author, p. 146,^[7]

     Then, since I’m sure to meet my Fate,

     How vain would Hope appear?

     Since Fear cannot protract the Date,

     How foolish ’twere to fear?

   • 1819, Walter Scott, The Bride of Lammermoor, Chapter 13,^[8]

     Both hoped to protract the discovery of what had happened—the mother, by interposing her bustling person betwixt Mr. Girder and the fire, and the daughter, by the extreme cordiality with which she received the minister and her husband […]
5. To extend; to protrude.

Synonyms

• (to draw out): prolong

Derived terms

Related terms

• See tract and its related terms

Translations