What's the difference between detract and distract?

Detract


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To take away; to withdraw.
  • (v. t.) To take credit or reputation from; to defame.
  • (v. i.) To take away a part or something, especially from one's credit; to lessen reputation; to derogate; to defame; -- often with from.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Unethical conduct in research can be divided into five categories: 1) falsification of data, in which the researcher manipulates results, provides data without experimentation, or biases the results to give a false impression of their value; 2) failure to credit others (former colleagues, students, associates) for research results or ideas; 3) plagiarism, use of other's published material (ideas, graphs, or tabular data) without permission or credit; 4) conflicts of commitment or interest in which work or ownership in a private firm in some way conflicts or detracts from the duties to the institution they represent or allows private gain through the individual's employment at the institution; 5) biased experimental design or interpretation of data to support public or private groups that have provided financial support for research.
  • (2) But over the Christmas period the Cahuzac story has continued to dominate headlines as some newspapers suggested Hollande might have a cabinet reshuffle both to detract from the Mediapart allegations and to draw a line under government disagreements over the handling of France's crisis-hit steel industry.
  • (3) The resulting disturbing, violent or disruptive behavior will severely detract from the quality of life the patient and family can share together.
  • (4) Neither TMP-SMZ nor amoxicillin produced hematologic effects that would detract from their continued use in children with infections caused by antibiotic-susceptible organisms.
  • (5) The search for new hypoxic cell radiosensitizers must not detract from the fact that a sensitizer of aerobic cells to low radiation doses is needed.
  • (6) But Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, warned that although the prosecutions of figures such as Savile were important, there was a danger they could detract from a pervasive problem.
  • (7) The majority of mothers do believe their child, with difficult situations and other family stressors occasionally detracting from a mother's willingness to accept the report.
  • (8) The study confirms that a communal orientation enhances satisfaction with a best friendship and that conflict and negativity detract from it.
  • (9) Look further and you see people in faked approximations of designer logos – that they've been traduced doesn't detract from their meaning; it gives them a new story.
  • (10) This should not detract from the fact that autoantibodies are a common secondary phenomenon which plays an important part in maintaining tissue microdebridement.
  • (11) Based on published articles and communication with representatives from each country, we examined whether the organization and conduct of these conferences in nine countries (United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) enhanced or detracted from achieving the stated conference goals and objectives.
  • (12) A medication's perceptual properties may have important and specific meanings for patients or clients that may support or detract from compliance.
  • (13) And none of this, he was convinced, detracted from his commitment to socialism.
  • (14) (tall fescue), and provides biological protection and enhanced fitness to its host, but its anti-mammalian ergot alkaloids detract from the usefulness of tall fescue as forage for livestock.
  • (15) Within the scape of a comparative long-term study between conservative and operative therapy of Perthes'-disease the effort was made to estimate the dimension of the psychic and social detraction in addiction to the method of treatment by a detailed inquiry of 116 patients as well as of their accompanying parents.
  • (16) A wider political solution is required to this crisis, but that does not detract from today’s rescue at sea.
  • (17) Of course, this is dreadful for the families involved, no one would want to detract from their distress, but neither should it prevent an objective examination of the complex picture revealed in the statistics.
  • (18) As part of a "health concepts" nursing course, students became much more aware of social, economic, environmental, and cultural factors that either enhanced or detracted from their ability to achieve their ideal life-styles.
  • (19) For anyone who clings to the idea that music can still soundtrack life's most elemental aspects, his answer would be a dream, though that doesn't detract from its sincerity.
  • (20) But Sam Watt of Vyclone, a phone app that encourages audiences to film at concerts and then brings together the footage to create a crowd-sourced video of the event, said that such artists were fighting a losing battle and that filming at concerts enhanced rather than detracted from the experience.

Distract


Definition:

  • (a.) Separated; drawn asunder.
  • (a.) Insane; mad.
  • (v. t.) To draw apart or away; to divide; to disjoin.
  • (v. t.) To draw (the sight, mind, or attention) in different directions; to perplex; to confuse; as, to distract the eye; to distract the attention.
  • (v. t.) To agitate by conflicting passions, or by a variety of motives or of cares; to confound; to harass.
  • (v. t.) To unsettle the reason of; to render insane; to craze; to madden; -- most frequently used in the participle, distracted.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At consolidation, the distraction area was composed of lamellar trabecular and partly woven bone.
  • (2) "Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain," Wallace wrote at one point, "because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from."
  • (3) The animals in group 1 (n = 6), group 2 (n = 3), and group 3 (n = 5) were killed at 4, 16, and 32 weeks, respectively, from the end of the distraction period.
  • (4) Strict fundamentalists oppose music in any form as a sensual distraction - the Taliban, of course, banned music in Afghanistan.
  • (5) Why would you want to boost him?” The president is accused of trying to distract from domestic problems – corruption scandals and an exposé showing he plagiarised parts of his law-school thesis – by attending to Trump.
  • (6) Miles Shipside, Rightmove director, said: "The number of new sellers is slightly up on the same period last year, though perhaps as a reflection of their urgency to sell, or to compensate for the distraction of the achievements served up by Team GB, they have dropped their asking prices more aggressively than summer sellers in previous years."
  • (7) Bone formation in the distraction zone was quantified by means of computed tomography.
  • (8) Furthermore, a time must come when in the wider interests of society it is necessary to stop relitigating the past, distracting attention and resources from the problems of the here and now.
  • (9) Distraction lengthening has gained wide acceptance in general orthopedics and in upper extremity reconstructions.
  • (10) The wire functioned as a spindle along which the distraction of the osteotomized bone fragments was continued.
  • (11) The noise distraction influenced performance of all groups similarly.
  • (12) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bannon scorns media in rare public appearance at CPAC Some observers suggested the move to block some organisations from the Friday briefing was an attempt to distract the public from controversial stories.
  • (13) But like so many of his colleagues in the Trump administration , Spicer has shown us how unconsciousness and stupidity can, however paradoxically, assume a Machiavellian function – how a flagrant example of gross insensitivity and flat-out odiousness can serve as yet another useful and convenient distraction.
  • (14) The results show that epiphyseal distraction is a valid method of limb lengthening, but it appears to have a consistently harmful effect on the growth plate and should be used clinically only in patients close to maturity.
  • (15) Myths such as those that we have described may distract our patients from the underlying behaviors that contribute to the disease or may deflect the blame perceived by obese patients and their parents.
  • (16) He is a bit different and speaks his mind but the most important thing is that he doesn’t get distracted from what’s happening on the court.
  • (17) Specific goals of the two-year study were to develop and test a method for assessing chart skills and to test the following hypotheses: (a) knowledge base is a component of chart review skill; (b) chart skills are related to basic observational skills; (c) performance on one chart is positively correlated with performance on other charts; (d) chart performance is affected by distraction and time pressure; and (e) chart performance improves with clinical experience.
  • (18) "It is clear this is a government which is short of ideas, desperately trying to bring up nonsensical diversions to distract attention from the situation in the country.
  • (19) Both groups showed substantial decrements in digit recall following distraction by letter matching.
  • (20) The arts and social space in Deptford opened in 2015 after three years of fundraising and it now runs a programme of gigs, screenings, talks and performances, as well as being home to Tome Records, which has a distractingly good selection of vinyl, as well as tapes and zines.