different between stretch vs protract

English

Etymology

From Middle English strecchen, from Old English stre??an (“to stretch, hold out, extend, spread out, prostrate”), from Proto-West Germanic *strakkjan (“to stretch, make taut or tight”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)treg-, *streg-, *treg- (“stiff, rigid”). Cognate with West Frisian strekke, Dutch strekken (“to stretch, straighten”), German strecken (“to stretch, straighten, elongate”), Danish strække (“to stretch”), Swedish sträcka (“to stretch”), Dutch strak (“taut, tight”), Albanian shtriqem (“to stretch”). More at stark.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /st??t?/
• Rhymes: -?t?

Verb

stretch (third-person singular simple present stretches, present participle stretching, simple past and past participle stretched or (obsolete) straught or (obsolete) straight)

1. (transitive) To lengthen by pulling.

2. (intransitive) To lengthen when pulled.
   • 1660, Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects

     The inner membrane […] because it would stretch and yield, remained unbroken.

3. (transitive) To pull tight.

4. (figuratively, transitive) To get more use than expected from a limited resource.

5. (figuratively, transitive) To make inaccurate by exaggeration.

6. (intransitive) To extend physically, especially from limit point to limit point.

7. (intransitive, transitive) To extend one’s limbs or another part of the body in order to improve the elasticity of one's muscles

8. (intransitive) To extend to a limit point

9. (transitive) To increase.
10. (obsolete, colloquial) To stretch the truth; to exaggerate.

11. (nautical) To sail by the wind under press of canvas.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Ham. Nav. Encyc to this entry?)

12. (slang, transitive, archaic) To execute by hanging.
13. To make great demands on the capacity or resources of something.

Translations

See also

• pandiculate

Noun

stretch (plural stretches)

1. An act of stretching.

2. The ability to lengthen when pulled.

3. A course of thought which diverts from straightforward logic, or requires extraordinary belief or exaggeration.

4. A segment of a journey or route.

5. A segment or length of material.

6. (Britain, slang, archaic) A walk.
   • Evelyn Underhill, quoted in 2010, Evelyn Underhill, ?Carol Poston, The Making of a Mystic: New and Selected Letters of Evelyn Underhill (page 81)

     In the afternoon I went for a stretch into the country, & about 4 it cleared up pretty well, so I hurried back & we got a cart & drove to Bassano, a little town about 8 miles off, that we wanted to see.

7. (baseball) A quick pitching delivery used when runners are on base where the pitcher slides his leg instead of lifting it.
8. (baseball) A long reach in the direction of the ball with a foot remaining on the base by a first baseman in order to catch the ball sooner.
9. (informal) Term of address for a tall person.
10. (horse racing) The homestretch, the final straight section of the track leading to the finish.
11. A length of time.

    • After the harvest there was a stretch of clear dry weather, and the animals toiled harder than ever […]

    1. (Ireland) Extended daylight hours, especially said of the evening in springtime when compared to the shorter winter days.

    2. (sports) The period of the season between the trade deadline and the beginning of the playoffs.
    3. (slang) A jail or prison term.

       Synonym: stint

       1. (slang) A jail or prison term of one year's duration.
    4. A single uninterrupted sitting; a turn.
12. A stretch limousine.

Translations

Derived terms

Descendants

• Esperanto: stre?i

Further reading

• stretch at OneLook Dictionary Search

References

• (a walk): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary

Anagrams

• strecht

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