How to Use protract in a Sentence

protract

verb

• Their young players are not good enough to protract the dynasty.
  — Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 17 Apr. 2024
• The strike would be the first in 15 years and history suggests it could be protracted.
  — Anousha Sakoui, Los Angeles Times, 28 Apr. 2023
• But this diplomatic can of worms could protract the conflict in Lebanon.
  — CNN, 13 Apr. 2024
• But the road to the referendum was protracted and bloody.
  — The Economist, 23 Nov. 2019
• This will be bloody, long and protracted, something the coalition does not want.
  — Hollie McKay, Fox News, 6 Aug. 2018
• That could take some time, that could really protract things.
  — Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 18 Feb. 2022
• The mean girl, the underdog, the sassy gay man, and the others, who have little function beyond protracting the process.
  — Chicago Reader, 2 Aug. 2017
• Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests were the largest and most protracted in the city’s history.
  — Ellen Bork, WSJ, 7 Nov. 2023
• The finale is protracted to the point of exhaustion, as the music hits a climactic wall and then runs into it again and again.
  — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2017
• The process of making sourdough is protracted, but Petrarca and Richardson said the crusty, tangy result is worth the effort.
  — David Lindquist, Indianapolis Star, 16 Apr. 2020
• Slowly lower your arms back to the starting position, allowing the scapula to protract and get a full stretch at the bottom.
  — Diego Mercado, Men's Health, 17 Jan. 2023
• If such a downturn is prolonged and protracted, months after the fact it is labeled a recession.
  — Jeff Sommer, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2023
• Then there’s more small talk and finally a protracted goodbye.
  — David Pierce, WSJ, 8 July 2018
• Already, the war has stretched for more than 14 months, making a yearslong protracted conflict more likely.
  — Paul Sonne, BostonGlobe.com, 6 May 2023
• The wars in both Gaza and Ukraine have shown that modern conflict is munitions-intensive and protracted.
  — Thomas G. Mahnken, Foreign Affairs, 5 June 2024
• On Sunday, Washington felt and beheld a day of warmth, haze and protracted sunshine.
  — Martin Weil, Washington Post, 19 June 2023
• The result of these won't be known for at least three weeks, protracting the negotiations, which have already taken months.
  — Jeremy Wallace, Houston Chronicle, 21 Feb. 2018
• The length may set a record for the court system in the nation’s capital and is likely among the most protracted in the history of American jurisprudence.
  — Peter Jamison, Washington Post, 29 May 2017
• The United States fought bloody and protracted wars in Korea and Vietnam and yet abstained from playing its nuclear trump card.
  — Andrew F. Krepinevich, Foreign Affairs, 12 Dec. 2023
• Emma Bovary to debt, seedy affairs and protracted death by arsenic.
  — Parul Sehgal, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2017
• The legal contest will likely be protracted and contentious.
  — Alexander William Salter, National Review, 17 Apr. 2024
• Cost overruns lead to projects going way over budget, and there are often protracted battles over routing.
  — Phillip Molnar, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Dec. 2023
• But as the war becomes protracted, the country also faces major structural demands.
  — Nataliya Gumenyuk, Foreign Affairs, 19 Apr. 2024
• The answer is yes, but they’re not protracted conversations.
  — Brian Davids, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 July 2023
• The improbable, protracted, yet oh-so-close resurrection of Tip Top Café is in a holding pattern because of two things.
  — Matt Wake | [e-mail], al, 26 Jan. 2023
• Disagreements among advisers, while at times robust and protracted, have barely surfaced in the press.
  — Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 9 Oct. 2023
• But Napoleon is protracted, as if running time and rambling narrative incidents (the back-and-forth from battlefield to Josephine) amounted to substance.
  — Armond White, National Review, 24 Nov. 2023
• Epidemics can be short-lived or protracted, or, like the Justinianic plague, recurrent.
  — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 30 Mar. 2020
• Even if Hamas agrees to the framework, negotiations between the two sides regarding those numbers could prove protracted.
  — Matt Bradley, NBC News, 4 Feb. 2024
• Pitt’s revelations came in the wake of his 2016 divorce from Jolie, which has devolved into bitter and protracted legal battles over the custody of their six children and the division of assets.
  — Martha Ross, The Mercury News, 7 Feb. 2024

Last Updated: 16 Aug 2024