DETRACT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Detract

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/dɪtrˈækt/ Listen

verb

Detract v. t. (past & past part. detracted; pres. part. detracting)

To take away; to withdraw. "Detract much from the view of the without."

To take credit or reputation from; to defame. "That calumnious critic... Detracting what laboriously we do."

Synonyms: To derogate; decry; disparage; depreciate; asperse; vilify; defame; traduce. See Decry.

Detract v. i. To take away a part or something, especially from one's credit; to lessen reputation; to derogate; to defame; often with from. "It has been the fashion to detract both from the moral and literary character of Cicero."

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Etymology of 'Detract'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Detract" Quotes from Famous Books

... Ulsterman would wish to detract a word from the tribute paid by Colonel Ward to the Redmond family and other gallant Catholic Nationalists who stood manfully for the Empire in the day of trial; but the concluding sentence in the above quotation cannot be gainsaid. And the pathetic thing was that Mr. Redmond himself never ...

— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... describe in this poem is fertile and tame. There was little left to him, except to enlarge on its antiquities, to speak of the habitations that were scattered over it, and to compliment the most distinguished among their possessors. Every day must detract something from the interest, such as it is, that arises from these sources. A poet should take care not to make the fund of his reputation liable to be affected by dilapidations, or to be passed away by the hands ...

— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... own by might of possession, conformity, owl-eyed sobriety, and ignorance—Bevy Fleming had become persona non grata. How did she take all this? With that air of superior consciousness which knows that no shift of outer material ill-fortune can detract one jot from an inward mental superiority. The truly individual know themselves from the beginning and rarely, if ever, doubt. Life may play fast and loose about them, running like a racing, destructive tide in and out, but they themselves are like ...

— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what ...

— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood

... rough-spun tweed travelling suit struck me with an almost painful sense of incongruity, and I re-clothed him in my imagination with the grand, sweeping Oriental costume which is the fitting and proper frame for such a picture—the only garb which does not detract from the dignity and ...

— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

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