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Do you exact or extract revenge?
The verb exact (as in, "exacting revenge" or "exacting a promise") is not as commonly encountered as the adjective exact, (as in "an exact copy" or "exact measurements"). Sometimes people will mistakenly use the more common verb extract when they really want exact. Extract can refer to removing something by pulling or cutting or to getting information from someone who does not want to give it. While both words refer to getting something they are used in different ways. You extract a tooth, but you exact revenge.
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The Crisscrossing Histories of Abstract and Extract
Abstract is most frequently used as an adjective (“abstract ideas”) and a noun (“an abstract of the article”), but its somewhat less common use as a verb in English helps to clarify its Latin roots. The verb abstract is used to mean “summarize,” as in “abstracting an academic paper.” This meaning is a figurative derivative of the verb’s meanings “to remove” or “to separate.”
We trace the origins of abstract to the combination of the Latin roots ab-, a prefix meaning “from” or “away,” with the verb trahere, meaning “to pull” or “to draw.” The result was the Latin verb abstrahere, which meant “to remove forcibly” or “to drag away.” Its past participle abstractus had the meanings “removed,” “secluded,” “incorporeal,” and, ultimately, “summarized,” meanings which came to English from Medieval Latin.
Interestingly, the word passed from Latin into French with competing spellings as both abstract (closer to the Latin) and abstrait (which reflected the French form of abstrahere, abstraire), the spelling retained in modern French.
The idea of “removing” or “pulling away” connects abstract to extract, which stems from Latin through the combination of trahere with the prefix ex-, meaning “out of” or “away from.” Extract forms a kind of mirror image of abstract: more common as a verb, but also used as a noun and adjective. The adjective, meaning “derived or descended,” is now obsolete, as is a sense of the noun that overlapped with abstract, “summary.” The words intersected and have separated in modern English, but it’s easy to see that abstract applies to something that has been summarized, and summarized means “extracted from a larger work.”
Synonyms
Examples of extract in a Sentence
Jamie Allison Sanders, Peoplemag, 24 Apr. 2024
If the water or steam is hot enough—ideally at least around 300 degrees Fahrenheit—it can be extracted from the ground and used to power generators for electricity.
—Katarina Zimmer, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Apr. 2024
Once saturated, it is returned to the kiln where the CO2 is extracted, and the cycle begins again.
—Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, 22 Apr. 2024
Getting to Know Hair Transplantation: Hair follicles from donor areas—usually the back or sides of the scalp—are extracted and then implanted into recipient spots that are balding.
—Tyler Shepherd, USA TODAY, 20 Apr. 2024
Currently, people 18 and older in Florida are allowed to buy CBD products, including oils and topicals, from authorized sellers if the product has 0.3% or less of THC and was extracted from the hemp plant.
—Michelle Marchante, Miami Herald, 19 Apr. 2024
Delta-8 is extracted from hemp, a cannabis plant that contains low levels of delta-9 THC, the psychoactive compound associated with marijuana.
—John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Ashley Okwuosa, The Examination | Amy Yurkanin, Al.com, Journal Sentinel, 18 Apr. 2024
From their index of space-time-bending properties, the team extracted the elusive Druck term, publishing their estimate of the proton’s internal pressures in Nature in 2018.
—Charlie Wood, WIRED, 14 Apr. 2024
One of the biggest concerns is the tailings basin where the waste is stored after copper is extracted from the ore.
—Caitlin Looby, Journal Sentinel, 10 Apr. 2024
Judy Bart Kancigor, Orange County Register, 25 Apr. 2024
Case in point: This unscented, paraben-free body butter contains a special blend of shea and mango butters for softness, as well as oat extract to calm inflammation.
—Nikhita Mahtani, Allure, 22 Apr. 2024
Free of chemicals and artificial preservatives, the wipes also contain organic ingredients such as vitamin E, rosemary oil extract, and chamomile extract.
—Bridget Shirvell, Parents, 18 Apr. 2024
Products made with that extract are also supposed to contain the same low levels of THC, but that isn’t always the case.
—John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Ashley Okwuosa, The Examination | Amy Yurkanin, Al.com, Journal Sentinel, 18 Apr. 2024
The participants were randomly assigned to take either 600 milligrams (mg) of artichoke leaf extract daily or a placebo for two months.
—Cynthia Sass, Mph, Health, 13 Apr. 2024
What’s unique about Cornbread Hemp is that it’s made with whole-plant hemp extract.
—Amber Smith, Discover Magazine, 3 Apr. 2024
The formula features auto-adaptive pearl extract for a luminous glow.
—Kathleen Suico, Allure, 13 Apr. 2024
Today, in the tech world, words like RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), a technique for enhancing the accuracy and reliability of generative AI models, ETL engines (extract, transform, and load), and Large Language Model (LLM) are quite common.
—Tyler Shepherd, USA TODAY, 12 Apr. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'extract.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near extract
Cite this Entry
“Extract.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extract. Accessed 30 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
extract
1 of 2 verb
extract
2 of 2 noun
Medical Definition
extract
1 of 2 transitive verb
extract
2 of 2 noun
Legal Definition
extract
noun
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