What's the difference between retract and retroact?
Retract
Definition:
(v. t.) To draw back; to draw up or shorten; as, the cat can retract its claws; to retract a muscle.
(v. t.) To withdraw; to recall; to disavow; to recant; to take back; as, to retract an accusation or an assertion.
(v. t.) To take back,, as a grant or favor previously bestowed; to revoke.
(v. i.) To draw back; to draw up; as, muscles retract after amputation.
(v. i.) To take back what has been said; to withdraw a concession or a declaration.
(n.) The pricking of a horse's foot in nailing on a shoe.
Example Sentences:
(1) Brain damage may be followed by a number of dynamic events including reactive synaptogenesis, rerouting of axons to unusual locations and altered axon retraction processes.
(2) Tottenham Hotspur’s £400m redevelopment of White Hart Lane could include a retractable grass pitch as the club explores the possibility of hosting a new NFL franchise.
(3) Any MP who claims this is not statutory regulation is a liar, and should be forced to retract and apologise, or face a million pound fine.
(4) During the first 15 to 20 min of metamorphosis the larval arms are retracted and resorbed into the aboral surface of the juvenile.
(5) • Written, oral and video statements of self-incrimination and self-renunciation by the detainees, apparently induced by the authorities, have been released through official media channels (for example, lawyer Zhang Kai was induced to make such a statement, which he later retracted).
(6) Duane's retraction syndrome is a congenital eye movement disorder characterized by a deficiency of abduction, mild limitation of adduction, with retraction and narrowing of the palpebral fissure on attempted adduction.
(7) Axonal trees display differential growth during development or regeneration; that is, some branches stop growing and often retract while other branches continue to grow and form stable synaptic connections.
(8) She said she was not worried by Rubio’s one-time position on his immigration bill, later retracted, that he could not support reform if it included citizenship for gay couples.
(9) Useful differential morphological criteria can be: star-like or transverse ring-shaped profile of isolated ulcerations, tubular ileocolic junction with retracted cecum and open valve, and uniformity of lesion in the comprehensive picture of the clinical case.
(10) Both require more brain retraction and have greater risk to the facial nerve than the translabyrinthine approach.
(11) Unlike posterior tympanoplasty, this technique makes it possible to meticulously remove the osteitic bone invariably found in the facial recess when there is infection of the retraction pocket.
(12) In the third patient laparotomy was applied owing to the bleeding from the retracted, cut uterine artery.
(13) Because of laboratory and clinical observation that recurrent nerve paralysis retracts the involved vocal cord from the midline, it was proposed that deliberate section of the recurrent nerve would improve the vocal quality of patients with spastic dysphonia.
(14) Seven to 30 days following axotomy the volume of the hypoglossal nucleus was significantly diminished, undoubtedly reflecting dendritic retraction (P less than 0.05).
(15) Contacts resulting in collapse and retraction were often accompanied by a rapid and transient burst of lamellipodial activity along the neurite 30-50 microns proximal to the retracting growth cone.
(16) At three, six, and twelve months after the first operation the development of retraction pockets was also studied.
(17) The anchoring wire can also be retracted and repositioned.
(18) The right occipital lobe is retracted laterally from the falx cerebri.
(19) These experiments demonstrated that accessory abducens is a primary controller of eye retraction through its axons to retractor bulbi.
(20) A commercial system for producing retracted compensators has been adapted to suit local needs, and is evaluated here.
Retroact
Definition:
(v. i.) To act backward, or in return; to act in opposition; to be retrospective.
Example Sentences:
(1) The immunity was enacted by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, with the support of leading Democrats including Barack Obama, who had promised - when seeking his party's nomination - to filibuster any bill that contained retroactive telecom immunity.
(2) Sixty five valid MMPI profiles, based on tests administered during the 1986 calendar year were retroactively scored for a scale designed by Sladen and Mozdzierz (1985) which was reportedly capable of identifying individuals likely to drop out of chemical dependency treatment.
(3) So perhaps, at some distant point in the future, the Nobel committee will find a crass way to play politics at the same time as giving a retroactive nod to Malala – unless she has become president of Pakistan: in which case she'll finally be in the sort of day job that tends to catch their eye.
(4) Just two weeks ago, Manafort registered retroactively with the justice department as a foreign agent for lobbying work he did from 2012 to 2014 for the Ukrainian political party.
(5) "There will not be any retroactive direct recapitalisation," Merkel told a news conference. "
(6) And now, the US supreme court just consecrated one of the most corrupt acts of the US government over the past decade: its vesting of retroactive legal immunity in the nation's telecom giants after they had been caught red-handed violating multiple US eavesdropping laws.
(7) Advantages and possibilities brought about by the method are presented: sensibility, reproducibility and dynamic study of the pattern of neurohormone release, without a possible retroactive action of released substances on the perifused tissue.
(8) Exposure to a session of tones causes retroactive interference through a cognitive effect.
(9) In view of this finding, that as well as a constant regulation with negative retroaction of the corticotrophic-releasing factor--adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH)--cortisol system, there exists an externally controlled servomechanism from nervous system activity related to the environment.
(10) The AX labeling reponses showed large contrast effects (both proactive and retroactive) that were greatly reduced when auditory memory was interfered with.
(11) The retroactive legislation, published on Thursday evening and expected to be rushed through parliament on Tuesday, will effectively strike down a decision by three senior judges and deny benefit claimants an average payout of between £530 and £570 each.
(12) The analyst obtains thus the means to understand (also in a retroactive way) the value and the limits of his interpretations.
(13) The possibilities are discussed of stimulating the regulation of the circuit that governs the tumoral defense, keeping the negative retroaction below the limits at which it starts developing exponentially, thereby enhancing anticancer defenses.
(14) Retroactive studies of viral diseases using routinely processed blocks of tissue (formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded) are therefore conceivable.
(15) Merkel made clear that any direct bank recapitalization, if and when it is allowed, would not be retroactive and could only be applied for future contingencies.
(16) Thirty patients with CPS of lateralized temporal lobe onset [15 left temporal (LT) and 15 right temporal (RT)] were compared with 15 matched controls (NC) on several measures derived from the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT), i.e., verbal learning ability, immediate free recall, presence of retroactive interference effects, semantic organization, retrieval efficiency, and recognition memory.
(17) The storage loss occurs because of the retroactive influence of other traces, and the storage retention function is precisely characterized by an underlying Weibull distribution.
(18) The author opposes the two principal conceptions of interpretation: the deterministic conception predominant in Freud, in which the present is determined by the subject's actual past; and the creative hermeneutic conception, which traces its origins back not only to Heidegger and Ricoeur but also to Jung; in the latter view, interpretation cannot but be retroactive, assigning significance to a meaningless past.
(19) Nothing like this had ever been seen before: a massive, open, retroactive evaluation of scientific literature, conducted entirely by computer.
(20) That could include inmates who have not retroactively benefited from recent sentencing reforms, meaning they would face lighter punishments if convicted today.